Charles Talbot Talbot Of Hensol, 1ST Baron (1685-1737), lord chancellor of England, was the eldest son of William Talbot, bishop of Durham, a descendant of the ist earl of Shrewsbury. He was educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford, and became a fellow of All Souls College in 1704. He was called to the bar in 1711, and in 1717 was appointed solicitor-general to the prince of Wales. Having been elected a member of the House of Commons in 1720, he became solicitor-general in 1726, and in 1733 he was made lord chancellor and raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Talbot of Hensol. Talbot proved himself an equity judge of exceptional capacity and of the highest character during the three years of his occupancy of the Woolsack. He died on the 14th of February 1737. Among his contemporaries Talbot enjoyed the reputation of a wit; he was a patron of the poet Thomson, who in The Seasons commemorated a son of his to whom he acted as tutor; and Butler dedicated his famous Analogy to the lord chancellor. The title assumed by Talbot was derived from Hensol in Glamorganshire, which came to him through his wife.
See Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal (8 vols. London, 1845-69); Edward Foss, The Judges of England (9 vols. London, 1848-64); Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (2 vols. London, 1848); G. E. C., Complete Peerage, vol. vii. (London, 1896).
