Mr Grant was an Original Member of The Yacht Club, but he had no yacht and resigned in 1816.
He was a Director of the East India Company and for a time was Chairman of the Board. He took an active part in promoting the construction of the Caledonian Canal and also many roads and bridges in the Highlands and represented the County of Inverness in Parliament.
Charles was born at Aldourie on the east shore of Loch Ness on 16 April 1746, the day that his father Alexander Grant was killed fighting at the battle of Culloden alongside Prince
Charles. Charles received the first part of his education at Milton, in a school founded by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Around this time Charles was adopted by his uncle John, Alexander's younger brother, who worked for HM's Excise in Elgin where Charles was brought to school. In 1758 he was apprenticed to William Forsyth, an entrepreneurial Cromarty ship-owner and merchant, who capitalised on the port infrastructure facilities abandoned by a broken herring fleet, to initiate building what became a trading empire. But by 1763 John had prevailed upon a cousin, Captain Alexander Grant, a partner in a mercantile house at Aldermanbury, London — having formerly been with Clive in India — to provide Charles a place. He worked for his cousin for five and a half ears, becoming head clerk, and was so trusted to the extent that Alexander left Charles in charge of his affairs whenever he returned to India.
At the age of 21, Charles set out for Bengal to make his fortune but by 1770 ill health, as a result of the pressure of dealing with the terrible famine which had hit India, forced him home. He returned to Loch Ness where he married Jane Fraser, daughter of Thomas Fraser of Balnain, on the western side of the Loch. He returned to India with his wife, arriving at Calcutta in June 1773. By 1787, Her Charles had acquired his first personal fortune through the manufacture of silk in Malda, Governor General Lord Cornwallis appointed him as a member of the East India Company's Board of Trade. In India Charles lived a profligate lifestyle as he climbed through the company's ranks but, after losing two children, Elizabeth and Margaret, to smallpox, he underwent a religious conversion. In reviewing his life including his efforts in India, from an evangelical Christian perspective, he changed his outlook. The following seventeen years were spent as Factor and Secretary to the Board of Trade before returning to Britain in 1790 when the family settled in Clapham where Charles became a key member of the Clapham Sect - a strong body and influential supporters of the work of William Wilberforce.
In 1793 Charles was promoted to become a Director of the East India Company and in 1802 was elected Member of Parliament for the county of Inverness. In 1804 he became Deputy Chairman of the Court of the East India Directors and its Chairman in 1805. Charles became laird of the estate of Waternish, on Skye and represented Inverness until 1818 when he was succeeded by his eldest son. Amongst the projects that he supported was the scheme for the construction of the Caledonian Canal besides promoting the expansion of roads and bridges throughout the Highlands.
Charles' last years were spent at 40 Russell Square, London, where he died in October 1823 of a heart attack aged 77, following a full day in the office. His widow died in 1827. Charles was buried at St George's Bloomsbury, the Nicholas Hawksmoor church where the East India Company - unusually for it - went to the extent of installing a marble monument in his memory.