(1770 - 1804), 2nd s. of William Lock of Norbury, Surr.; m. 1795 Cecilia Margaret Ogilvie (1775 - 1824); cons. Naples 1799 - 1801, Cairo 1804; d. Malta.
1799 - 1801 [dep. England Nov. 1798] Palermo (29 Jan. - 30 Jun. 1799 - ), Naples (by 13 - 30 Jul.), Palermo (7 Aug.) [Malta, Aug.] Palermo, Naples (Jun. 1800 - 19 Mar.; Jun. - Aug. 1801)
A warm-hearted but impulsive man, Charles Lock was appointed consul general at Naples in 1799. Lady Elizabeth Foster innocently recommended him and his wife to Emma Hamilton as 'uncommonly amiable and pleasing',1 but Emma was to prove the bane of their diplomatic lives. On 29 January 1799 they arrived with their two small children at Palermo whither the Neapolitan court had fled from Naples. In the spring Lock toured Sicily with Guy Head and Cecilia bore their third child, but they were unsettled by their growing suspicions concerning Emma, Nelson and the Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina.
It began when Lock was not informed that the Hamiltons, Nelson and the King and Queen had returned to Naples on 23 June to exact revenge on the Jacobin element of the city, and on 30 June Lock wrote angrily of 'that superficial, grasping and vulgar minded woman' Emma Hamilton, and of Nelson's extravagant love for her which 'has made him the laughing stock of the whole fleet'. Lock sailed for Naples on 30 June (and by 13 July he had seen Pompeii). On 27 July he had a serious difference with Nelson concerning the victualling of the fleet, a contract worth some £;4000 which Lock was anxious to administer himself. On 30 July Lock had decided that Emma was 'at the bottom of all the mischief. I can paint nothing so black and detestable as that woman'. On 7 August he returned to his family in Palermo, and on the 9th he reiterated that Emma Hamilton was 'the bitterest enemy you can imagine. Her wish to engross the conduct of affairs entirely ... prompted her to poison Sir William's mind against me; to this was added that she could not bear that any English woman should be admired by her countrymen except herself ... she has taken occasion to insinuate that my wife's principles are republican'. Lock visited Malta in August, but his differences with Nelson persisted, with increasing rancour on both sides. Cecilia meanwhile was hating the place and the climate. In February 1800 Lock managed to offend the King of Naples by attending a masquerade dressed (it was thought) as a sans-culotte and he was turned out.
After the departure of the Hamiltons and Nelson, the Locks came to Naples from Palermo in June 1800. They were to leave Naples on 19 March 1801, after an expensive and unhappy diplomatic tour. They returned to Naples in June 1801, but Lock, never a popular figure, resigned his post in August that year. His last visit to Italy was in April - June 1804 en route for Constantinople. He died that September in Malta of a fever.2
1. Morrison, 2:38 (no.375). 2. See Sermoneta, Locks of Norbury, 142 - 206.