The Right Honourable Charles Lord Hawkesbury, Chancellor of the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster, 1788

Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool (1729–1808), statesman, was educated at Oxford and entered parliament in 1761. Having earned the favour of George III, he was appointed to a succession of influential posts, serving as a Lord of the Admiralty and of the Treasury under the prime ministerships of George Grenville and the Duke of Grafton. Jenkinson held the important position of Secretary at War for four years during the American Revolutionary War, consolidating his closeness to the King. He was made Baron Hawkesbury in 1786; and in 1796 he became the 1st Earl of Liverpool. It was during his tenure as President of the Board of Trade (from 1786 to 1804) that the British government implemented its decision to colonise New South Wales; the colony’s first governor, Arthur Phillip, named the Hawkesbury River for Jenkinson in June 1789. Jenkinson’s son from his first marriage, Robert Bankes Jenkinson, 2nd Earl Liverpool, was prime minister of Great Britain from 1812 to 1827, and is the Liverpool after whom Liverpool, New South Wales is named.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2014