STEWART, Hon. Charles (1681-1741), of West Mailing, Kent.

Charles Stewart lost his right hand at the age of 16 in an engagement against the French, for which he was granted a naval pension of £100 in February 1699.Charnock, Biog. Navalis, iii. 304; CSP Dom. 1699-1700, pp. 68, 74. On his mission to Morocco in 1721 he was able to negotiate the release of a large number of English prisoners there. From Michaelmas 1724 he received a further pension of £300 on the Irish establishment.CJ [I], v. 325. He appears to have been attached to the 2nd Duke of Argyll, on whose interest he was returned for Malmesbury in 1723. In 1732 Argyll was expected by Sir Charles Wager to ask that Stewart should be returned at the next general election for Portsmouth,To Walpole, 8 Dec. 1732, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. for which he was in fact returned at a by-election in 1737, voting against the Spanish convention in 1739, presumably under Argyll’s influence, but with the Administration on the place bill of 1740. He died 5 Feb. 1741.