Charles Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Stuart of Wortley

Charles Beilby Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Stuart of Wortley (15 September 1851 – 24 April 1926), was a British Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 until 1916, shortly before he was raised to the peerage. He served as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department between 1885–1886 and 1886–1892 in the Conservative administrations headed by Lord Salisbury.

Background and education A member of the Stuart family headed by the Marquess of Bute, Stuart-Wortley was the son of James Stuart-Wortley, youngest son of James Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Wharncliffe, son of James Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, second son of Prime Minister John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. His mother was the Hon. Jane Stuart-Wortley (born Lawley). He was educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford and called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1876. He was secretary to the Royal Commission on the Sale of Benefices from 1879 to 1880.

Political career In 1880 Stuart-Wortley was the first Conservative to be elected as a Member of Parliament for Sheffield, and when this constituency was broken up under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, he was elected in the 1885 general election as MP for the new Sheffield Hallam constituency. He served under Lord Salisbury as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department between 1885 and 1886 and again from 1886 to 1892. In 1896 he was admitted to the Privy Council. Stuart-Wortley resigned from the House of Commons on 16 December 1916 and in 1917 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Stuart of Wortley, of the City of Sheffield.

Personal life Lord Stuart of Wortley married Beatrice, daughter of Thomas and Theodosia Trollope (and niece of the author Anthony Trollope), in 1880. Beatrice died in July 1881 and Stuart married as his second wife Alice Sophia Caroline Millais (1862–1936), daughter of the artist John Everett Millais.

He died in April 1926, aged 74, when the barony became extinct.