Monck, Charles Stanley (1819–94), 4th Viscount Monck , first Canadian governor-general, church temporalities commissioner, and MP, was the eldest of the two sons and two daughters of Charles Joseph Kelly Monck, third Viscount Monck (second brother of the earl of Rathdowne, second Viscount Monck), and his wife, Bridget, youngest daughter of John Willington, of Killoskehane, Co. Tipperary. Educated at TCD, he graduated BA in 1841 and was called to the Irish bar at the King's Inns that year. He most likely practised in Dublin, as at the time he had little reason to think about succession to the Monck titles and estates. On 22 July 1844 he married his cousin Lady Elizabeth Louise Mary Monck (d. 1892), youngest daughter of Henry Stanley Monck, first earl of Rathdowne. They had seven children, four of whom reached adulthood.
During the Great Famine Monck formed part of a Dublin reform group, centred on himself, John Robert Godley (qv), and William Monsell (qv), and later joined by William Smith O'Brien (qv), calling themselves ‘the Irish Party’. The group's object was to unite classes and creeds in Ireland, and to this end, in January 1847, it presented a memorandum to parliament outlining their programme, which included proposals for dealing with the famine. The memorandum was debated in parliament, but to no effect, and the group soon disbanded over policy differences.
When in 1848 his father succeeded to the Monck viscountcy, Monck decided to enter formal politics, unsuccessfully standing as a conservative at a Co. Wicklow by-election on a platform of the right of compensation of tenants for improvements. On 20 April 1849 he succeeded his father, and inherited 16,000 acres in Leinster and the family seat at Charleville, Co. Wicklow. In February 1851 he was appointed a commissioner of charitable bequests in Ireland, and in July the following year was elected liberal MP for the English borough of Portsmouth. Monck finally achieved office in Palmerston's administration, serving as privy seal to the prince of Wales (1855–8) and a junior lord of the treasury (1855–8), a salaried position. Following the loss of his parliamentary seat in a by-election in 1858 he was offered the governorship of New South Wales, but turned it down; he still hoped to be returned to parliament and obtain a salaried government post. In the 1859 general election he unsuccessfully stood for the borough of Dudley in Warwickshire, after which he returned to his Wicklow residence and tended to his estates.
With his substantial estates, Monck had also inherited substantial debts (£90,000), and was in dire need of income. Consequently, in 1861 he let it be known that he would accept a colonial appointment should one be offered. That August he was offered the governor generalship of British North America; a great motivation for accepting, he later stated, was the salary. He arrived at Quebec in October 1861 a relative unknown, and took office in November at a volatile time when war between Britain and the USA seemed likely as a result of the Trent affair, and British North America the likely battleground. In the following years the dangers posed by the American civil war and the Fenian invasions of 1866 became strong incentives in favour of a union of British North American provinces. Monck was one of the architects of the ‘great coalition’ in Canadian politics, devised to end political deadlock in the Canadas and carry through confederation; he also worked to overcome opposition to confederation in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He not only helped get confederation off the ground in British North America but was also active in debates in Britain, attending the London conferences in autumn 1866 and participating in the debate on the British North America Act in the house of lords, to which he had been elevated as a UK peer in July 1866.
Following the passage of the British North America Act, Monck agreed to stay on in Ottawa to become the first governor-general of the dominion of Canada. He left Canada from Quebec in November 1868 to return to Ireland, and was rewarded for his service by being made a GCMG in June 1869; the following August he was appointed to the privy council. With the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, Monck served as a member (1869–81) of the church temporalities commission to administer the church's properties, largely because of his detailed knowledge of how the anglican Church of Canada's property had been administered following its disestablishment in 1853. With the 1870 elementary education act providing state-aided non-sectarian schools in Ireland, Monck was appointed a commissioner for national education (1872–94). He was also a land commissioner (1882–4) under Gladstone's 1881 Land Act and a member of the arrears commission (1882–4) established under the 1882 Arrears Act. Debilitated by arthritis, he left public office in 1884, though he was consulted by Gladstone on the 1886 home rule bill, which Monck opposed. He was also lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Co. Dublin (1874–92). Monck died at Charleville 29 November 1894. His papers are in the National Archives of Canada.