Thomas Coningsby, 1st Earl Coningsby

Thomas Coningsby, 1st Earl Coningsby PC (1656 – 1 May 1729), was an English member of parliament and privy councillor.

Early life

Thomas Coningsby was born about 1657, was great-grandson of Sir Thomas Coningsby, and the son of Humphrey Coningsby, by Lettice, eldest daughter of Sir Arthur Loftus of Rathfarnham, Ireland. Ferdinando Gorges, of Eye in Herefordshire, a merchant from Barbados, contrived to secure for himself some of the Coningsby estates, and to marry his eldest daughter Barbara to Thomas Coningsby when a lad. The marriage license was applied for to the vicar-general of the Archbishop of Canterbury on 18 February 1674/5, when Coningsby was described as aged about nineteen, and Barbara Gorges was stated to be about eighteen years old. Ferdinando's financial scheming caused ruinous loss to his son-in-law, from which he never succeeded in extracting himself.cite web | last =Courtney | first =W. P. | title =Coningsby, Thomas, Earl (1656?–1729) | work = Dictionary of National Biography Vol. XII | publisher =Smith, Elder & Co. | date =1887 | url =http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/olddnb.jsp?articleid=6076 | format = | doi = | accessdate = 2007-10-23 ]

Coningsby entered upon parliamentary life in 1679, being returned for the borough of Leominster in Herefordshire, a constituency which he represented continuously from that time to 1710, and from 1715 until his elevation to the British peerage.

Royal allegiance

William III

He was an ardent supporter of the revolution of 1688, and throughout his life resolutely resisted, sometimes with more zeal than discretion, the aims of the Jacobite faction. Coningsby was with William III when he crossed to Ireland, and when the king was wounded at the battle of the Boyne. He was appointed joint receiver and Paymaster-General of the forces employed in the reduction of Ireland, and from 1690 to 1692 he acted as the junior of the three lords-justices of Ireland: the treaty of Limerick, so it is said, having been arranged through his skill. His political opponents accused him of having used his position to gratify his greed. The embezzlement of stores, the appropriation of the estates of rebels, the sale of pardons, and dealings in illicit trade were among the offences imputed to him; but such charges were of slight moment so long as the royal influence was at his back. Through the king's favour he was created Baron Coningsby of Clanbrassil in Ireland on 17 April 1692, and sworn as privy councillor on 13 April 1693, and pardoned under the great seal in May 1694 for any transgressions which he might have committed while in office in Ireland.

From 1695 to his death he held the office of chief steward of the city of Hereford, an appointment which involved him in a duel with Lord Chandos, another claimant of the post, "but no mischief was done". In April 1697 he received a grant under the Privy Seal of several of the crown manors in England, and in October 1698 he was again created the vice-treasurer and paymaster of the forces in Ireland.

Anne

During Queen Anne's reign he acted consistently with the whigs, but his services received slight acknowledgment even when his friends were in office. All that Godolphin did was to write a civil letter or two complimenting Lord Coningsby on 'his judgment and experience' in parliamentary affairs, and it was not until October 1708 that Coningsby was sworn of Anne's privy council. He was one of the managers of Henry Sacheverell's trial, and, like most of the prominent whigs, he lost his seat in parliament through the tory reaction which ensued.

George I

With the accession of George I he resumed his old position in public life, and once more basked in court favour. He was included in the select committee of twenty-one appointed to inquire into the negotiations for the treaty of Utrecht, and, according to Prior, was one of the three most inquisitive members of that body. As a result of their investigations, the impeachment of Bolingbroke was moved by Robert Walpole and that of Harley by Coningsby — a family feud had long existed between the two Herefordshire families of Harley and Coningsby — and Ormonde's by Stanhope. Two years later Harley was unanimously discharged, but this concord of opinion was only obtained by Coningsby and some others withdrawing from the proceedings. For his zeal in behalf of the Hanoverian succession he was well rewarded. The lord-lieutenancy of Herefordshire was conferred on him in November 1714, and in the following month he obtained the same pre-eminency in Radnorshire.

A barony in the English peerage was granted to him on 18 June 1716, and he was raised to the higher dignity of Earl Coningsby on 30 April 1719. In the later years of his life Coningsby was involved in perpetual trouble. He was a widower, without any male heir, and with innumerable lawsuits. For some severe reflections on Lord Harcourt, the Lord Chancellor, in connection with these legal worries, he was, as Swift notes in his diary, committed to the Tower of London on 27 February 1720.

Family life and death

After having been in ill-health for some time, he died at the family seat of Hampton, near Leominster, on 1 May 1729. By his first wife, Barbara Gorges, whom he married in February 1674/5, and from whom he was divorced, he had four daughters and three sons, and his grandson by this marriage succeeded to the Irish barony, but died without issue on 18 December 1729. His second wife, whom he married in April 1698, was Lady Frances Jones, daughter of Richard Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh, by whom he had one son, Richard, who died at Hampton on 2 April 1708 when two years old, choked by a cherrystone; and two daughters, Margaret and Frances. The second countess was buried at Hope-under-Dinmore on 23 February 1714/15, aged 42; and Lord Coningsby was buried in the same church in 1729, under a marble monument, on which the child's death is depicted in striking realism.

The grant of his English peerage contained a remainder for the eldest daughter of his second marriage. Her issue male, John, the only child of this daughter, Margaret Newton, 2nd Countess Coningsby, by her husband Sir Michael Newton, died an infant, the victim of an accidental fall, said to have been caused through the fright of its nurse at seeing an ape, and on the mother's death in 1761 the title became extinct. The younger daughter of Lord Coningsby married Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a well-known satirical poet, and was buried in the chapel of St. Erasmus, Westminster Abbey, in December 1781.

Legal difficulties

Coningsby's troubles in law arose from his purchase of the manors of Leominster and Marden. After elaborate investigations, he convinced himself that the lord's rights had in many instances been trespassed upon by the copyhold tenants. He caused ejectments to be brought against many persons for being in possession of estates as freehold which he claimed to be copyhold, and as these claims were resisted by the persons in possession, his last days were embittered by constant strife. His collections concerning Marden were printed in 1722–7 in a bulky tome, without any title-page, and with pagination of great irregularity, but were never published. When his right to the Marden property was disputed, all the copies of this work but a few were destroyed. Some proofs of his irritable disposition have been already mentioned. Through his sharpness of temper he was exposed to the caustic sallies of Atterbury in the House of Lords, and to the satires of Swift and Pope in their writings.

References

Notes

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