Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/57

 lands as governor of the Brill (, Letters during the Reign of Elizabeth, p. 173). In the first parliament held in the reign of James I he sat as member for Penryn (, Notitia Parliamentaria iii. pt. ii. p. 158). When Brill was delivered up to the States of Holland (1616), he received a pension of 500l. per annum (, Letters to Sir T. Roe, p. 35). On 30 Jan. 1622-3 he was made one of the principal secretaries of state, and he was continued in that office after the accession of Charles I (, Hist. Notes, ii. 497, 569;, Cat. of Tanner MSS. p. 88 a). He was returned for Evesham to the parliament which assembled on 19 Feb. 1623-4 (, p. 196), and on 22 March 1624-5 he was created Baron Conway of Ragley in the county of Warwick. On 8 Dec. 1625 he was constituted captain of the Isle of Wight. In 2 Car. I he was created Viscount Killultagh of Killultagh, county Antrim, Ireland (, Illustr. of British Hist. ed. 1838, ii. 553), and on 6 June 1627 Viscount Conway of Conway Castle in Carnarvonshire (, Baronage, ii. 453). He was also made lord president of the council, and was sent as ambassador to Prague (1623-1625). He died in St. Martin's Lane, London, on 3 Jan. 1630-1.

By his wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy of Tedington, Gloucestershire, and widow of Edmund Bray, he had three sons and four daughters. His eldest son, Edward, succeeded to the family honours.



CONWAY, FRANCIS SEYMOUR, (1719–1794), born in 1719, was son and heir of Francis Seymour, first lord Conway (who assumed the name of Conway), by his third wife, Charlotte, granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, lord mayor of London, and sister of the first wife of Sir  [q. v.] Succeeding his father as second baron Conway in 1732, he, on 3 Aug. 1750, was created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, titles recently extinct by the death of Algernon, seventh duke of Somerset. He became a lord of the bedchamber and K.G. in 1757; privy councillor in 1763; afterwards ambassador extraordinary to France; lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1765; lord chamberlain 1766–82 and again April-Dec. 1783 in the coalition ministry; lord-lieutenant of Warwickshire from 1757 till death. On 3 July 1793 he was created Earl of Yarmouth, co. Norfolk, and Marquis of Hertford. He died on 14 June 1794.

He married (1741) Isabella, daughter of Charles Fitzroy, second duke of Grafton, by whom he had seven sons and six daughters. His eldest son, [q. v.], succeeded to the titles.



CONWAY, HENRY SEYMOUR (1721–1795), field-marshal, second son of Francis Seymour, first lord Conway, by his third wife, Charlotte, daughter of Sir John Shorter, lord mayor of London, and sister of Catherine, wife of Sir Robert Walpole, earl of Orford, was born in 1721 and entered the army at an early age. During the spring of 1740 he was in Paris (, Letters, i. 39), and spent the summer of that year in London, applying himself diligently to the study of mathematics, fortification, and drawing (Rockingham Memoirs, i. 374). The projected marriage, which took place in May 1741, of his brother, [q. v.], afterwards earl and marquis of Hertford, to Isabella, daughter of Charles, second duke of Grafton, led to a fruitless negotiation for his return as member for the duke's borough of Thetford. On 19 Oct. 1741 Conway was returned to the Irish parliament for Antrim, which he represented until 1761. On 28 Dec. 1741 he was returned to the parliament of Great Britain as member for Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, and, with the exception of ten months (1774–5), sat in successive parliaments until the dissolution in 1784, being returned for Penryn, Cornwall, 1 July 1747; for St. Mawes, in the same county, 19 April 1754; for Thetford, Norfolk, 28 April 1761; and for Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, 27 March 1775 and 12 Sept. 1780, in each case representing a close constituency. In 1741 Conway was promoted captain-lieutenant of the 1st regiment of footguards, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in the spring of the following year joined the army in Flanders. Greatly to his disgust he found himself condemned to inactivity and spent the summer at Ghent, employing himself better than his brother officers generally by reading ‘both morning and evening’ (ib. 383). As the States refused to allow their troops to march with the British to the Rhine, Conway, in common with all other officers who were members of parliament, received leave to return to England for the session which opened in November, and formed one of the majority against a vote for disbanding the army in Flanders. In May 1743 he rejoined his regiment near Frankfort, and was present at the battle of Dettingen on 27 June; but to his mortification the brigade of guards was hindered by Baron Ilton, the Hanoverian general, from taking