Charles Whitworth, 1st Earl Whitworth

The Right Honourable The Earl Whitworth GCB PC
Charles Whitworth (1752-1825), by Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
In office 23 June 1813 – 3 October 1817
Monarch	George III
Preceded by	The Duke of Richmond
Succeeded by	The Earl Talbot

Charles Whitworth, 1st Earl Whitworth GCB, PC (29 May 1752 – 13 May 1825), known as The Lord Whitworth between 1800 and 1813 and as The Viscount Whitworth between 1813 and 1815, was a British diplomat and politician.

Whitworth, the eldest of the three sons (there were also four daughters) and heir of Sir Charles Whitworth, MP, (a nephew of Charles Whitworth, 1st Baron Whitworth), was born at Leybourne Grange, Kent, on 19 May 1752 and baptised there on 29 May 1752. He was educated at Tonbridge School, his preceptors there including James Cawthorn and "Mr. Towers".

He entered the first regiment of footguards in April 1772 as ensign, became captain in May 1781, and was eventually on 8 April 1783 appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 104th regiment. His transference from military life to diplomacy is not easy to explain, but in the account given by Wraxall, disfigured though it is by malicious or purely fanciful embroidery, there is perhaps a nucleus of truth. Whitworth was

The good offices of the queen and Dorset, according to this authority, procured for Whitworth in June 1785 his appointment as envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary to Poland, of which country the unfortunate Stanisław Poniatowski was still the nominal monarch. He was at Warsaw during the troubled period immediately preceding the second partition. Recalled early in 1788, he was in the following August nominated envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg, a post which he held for nearly twelve years.