Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe

The Right Honourable The Viscount Bledisloe GCMG KBE PC
Formal portrait of Lord Bledisloe in uniform.
4th Governor-General of New Zealand
In office 19 March 1930 – 15 March 1935
Monarch	George V
Preceded by	Sir Charles Fergusson, Bt
Succeeded by	The Viscount Galway
Member of Parliament for Wilton
In office 15 January 1910 – 15 October 1918
Preceded by	Levi Lapper Morse
Succeeded by	Hugh Morrison
Personal details
Born	(1867-09-21)21 September 1867 London, United Kingdom
Died	3 July 1958(1958-07-03) (aged 90) Lydney, Gloucestershire United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative

Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe GCMG KBE PC (21 September 1867 – 3 July 1958), was a British Conservative politician and colonial governor. He was Governor-General of New Zealand from 1930 to 1935.

He was born in London, the second son of Charles Bathurst, of Lydney Park and Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Col. Thomas Hay by Georgette Arnaud. He was educated at Sherborne School, Eton and then University College, Oxford, where he graduated with a law degree in 1890. He then studied law and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1892, when he gained an MA from Oxford. He was also called to the bar. He inherited Lydney Park on the death of his elder brother.

Bathurst worked as a barrister and conveyancer and in 1910 entered parliament representing the Conservative Party as MP for the South or Wilton division of Wiltshire. After serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food,

During the Great War he joined the Royal Engineers Special Reserves, and then appointed to Southern Command as Assistant Miitary Secretary at the War Office. he carried the task of ensuring the country had a supply of sugar when asked to chair the Royal Commission on Sugar Supply until 1919. Bathurst was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1917, and raised to the peerage as Baron Bledisloe, of Lydney in the County of Gloucester on 15 October 1918. He remained in parliament until 1928, serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1924 onwards. The following year he granted an honorary Doctorate of Science by Bristol University and was a member of the Privy Council from 1926. Stanley Baldwin appointed Lord Bledisloe to chair the Royal Commission on Land Drainage probably owing to his own experiences on the banks of the Severn in Gloucestershire. But it was his last such honour until being posted overseas.