Manners-Sutton was the fourth son of
Lord George Manners-Sutton (third son of
John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland) and his wife Diana Chaplin, daughter of Thomas Chaplin. His younger brother was
Thomas Manners-Sutton, 1st Baron Manners,
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His father, Lord George, had assumed the additional surname of Sutton in 1762 on inheriting – from his elder brother
Lord Robert – the estates of their maternal grandfather
Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton. He was called Charles Manners before 1762. Manners-Sutton was educated at
Charterhouse School and
Emmanuel College, Cambridge (matriculated 1773, graduated
B.A. as
15th wrangler 1777,
M.A. 1780,
D.D. 1792). He married at age 23, and probably eloped with, his cousin Mary Thoroton, daughter of
Thomas Thoroton and his wife Mary (Levett) Thoroton of Screveton Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1778. (Col. Thomas Blackborne Thoroton later moved to Flintham Hall,
Flintham, near Screveton, Nottinghamshire. He was later known as Thomas Thoroton Hildyard. Both Thoroton and his stepbrother Levett Blackborne, Esq., a
Lincoln's Inn barrister, had long acted as advisers to
John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland, and Col. Thoroton was often resided at
Belvoir Castle, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Rutland.) In 1785, Manners-Sutton was appointed to the family living at Averham with Kelham, in Nottinghamshire, and in 1791, became
Dean of Peterborough. He was consecrated
Bishop of Norwich in 1792, and two years later received the appointment of
Dean of Windsor in commendam. ==Archbishop of Canterbury==