enemies did not fail to attribute to cowardice. The satirist, however, surprised his friends by penning excellent despatches, and was soon marked out for promotion in the diplomatic service. Henry Fox demanded for him the post of envoy at Turin in place of Villettes. Several of his letters to Fox 1747–8 are printed in his collected works, and contain well-written and entertaining pictures of the court life in the smaller German principalities, the fair of Leipzig, and the feud between Saxe-Gotha and Meiningen. In July 1749 he was commissioned along with John Anstis the younger [q. v.], Garter-at-arms, to carry the order to the margrave of Anspach, and early in 1750, at the repeated instance of Henry Fox, he was named envoy-extraordinary at Berlin in succession to Legge. His extreme acuteness in scenting out bribes displeased Frederick, and, as he said in a letter to Fox, ‘it were vain to contend with so mighty a prince.’ The king of Prussia demanded his recall with some acerbity, and in February 1751 Sir Charles was ordered to proceed to Dresden to the court of Augustus III, elector of Saxony and king of Poland (see Droysen, v. iv. 241; Tuttle, Hist. of Prussia, ii. 186 sq.) Stopping at Hanover, en route, he was despatched by George II to Warsaw, where the king of Poland was holding his diet, his object being to engage the king's vote for the Archduke Joseph in view of the election of a king of the Romans (for his correspondence with Newcastle on this subject, see Addit. MS. 32829 passim).
In 1753 he left Dresden and was sent to Vienna to demand the assistance of that court in case Prussia should proceed to extremities after stopping the Silesian loan. In his triple capacity as minister, courtier, and poet, he composed an epigrammatic distich in Latin upon the Empress Maria Theresa, which went the round of Europe and was magnified into a great diplomatic coup. Walpole said that Williams was better at squibs than compliments; but Voltaire praised the writer as a most elegant Ciceronian. Sir Charles had met the great French wit at Berlin in September 1750, and had adroitly flattered him. ‘L'envoyé d'Angleterre m'a fait de très-beaux vers anglais,’ wrote Voltaire to d'Argental (Berlin, 23 Sept. Œuvres, 1875–85, xxxvii. 181). After a visit to England at the close of 1753, Sir Charles was again appointed to Dresden, and attended the king of Poland in 1754 to Warsaw, where, upon espousing very warmly the interests of the Poniatowskis in respect to the disposition of the Ostrog, he came to an open rupture with the Saxon minister, Count Brühl (see his correspondence of September 1754 in Addit. MS. 32859 ad fin., Newcastle Papers).
This event terminated his mission to the court of Dresden, but early in 1755 he was despatched to St. Petersburg with the idea of forwarding the design of a triple alliance between Great Britain, Austria, and Russia. His correspondence with Lord Holderness from St. Petersburg, dated September and October 1755, is in Stowe MS. 253, and contains details of the large bribes which Sir Charles administered to the great chancellor, the vice-chancellor, the secretaries of the college for foreign affairs, and other minor officials, and extraordinary particulars relating to the Empress Elizabeth. As successor to the dull and inefficient Guy Dickens, and as a brilliant courtier as well as a lavish dispenser of bribes, Williams at first carried all before him, and he wrote to Holderness that he was resolved to employ well the honeymoon of his embassy. So rapid in fact was his success that on 30 Sept. 1755 (within seven weeks of his arrival) a treaty was signed at St. Petersburg providing for fifty-five thousand Russian troops to enter English pay. Unfortunately in the interval Frederick, thoroughly alarmed, had secretly offered terms to England, while Maria Theresa had drawn back. In place of the praise which he had expected, Williams's efforts were coldly acknowledged, and he was ordered to reverse his policy. This unjust treatment, weighing upon a too sanguine and perhaps vain temperament, unhinged his mind. He lingered on at St. Petersburg, amid humiliations of all kinds, until the summer of 1757. He then set out for home, but broke down completely at Hamburg, and, after a partial recovery, consequent upon his return to Coldbrook, relapsed once more into a state bordering upon insanity, and died by his own hand on 2 Nov. 1759.
Williams was buried in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey on 10 Nov. His will was proved on 12 Nov. 1759 by his brother, George Hanbury, to whom Coldbrook and the greater portion of the real estate reverted. He assumed the name of Williams, and died in 1764, leaving issue, whence the present family of Coldbrook are descended (Burke, Landed Gentry). The remainder of his estate Sir Charles left in trust for his daughters Frances and Charlotte. The elder daughter visited Strawberry Hill in July 1754, and charmed Horace Walpole by a sketch of the castle, which she made unasked and submitted to his approbation. ‘She is to be married to Lord Essex in a week,’ he wrote. Her marriage to William
