DARCY, Conyers (1622-92)

Conyers Darcy, son and namesake of Conyers Darcy, 8th Baron Darcy and 5th Baron Conyers (and later earl of Holdernesse), was, like his father, influential in Yorkshire and particularly its North Riding. Throughout the 1660s and 70s he held a number of local offices and commissions. He was deputy lieutenant and colonel of militia for the North Riding under his kinsman Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg, in which role he was prominent in the suppression of the 1663 ‘Farnley Wood’ conspiracy. SP 29/81/62, 29/81/132 (CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 295, 305 misattributes these letters to his father). In 1671 his father passed over to him the offices connected with the liberty of Richmond which were traditionally held by the Darcy family, and which enabled Conyers Darcy to have a strong interest in elections for the borough of Richmond. CSP Dom. 1671, p. 158.

During his service in the Commons, in which he was largely inactive, Darcy was seen as a government supporter and a close follower of his fellow Yorkshireman Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds). Browning, Danby, iii. 39, 74, 76, 85, 91, 116. He relied on the government’s protection when in February 1674 Darcy arranged – many said by forcibly abducting the bride – the secret marriage of his son John Darcy^‡ to Bridget Sutton, only daughter of the deceased Robert Sutton, Baron Lexinton. Her guardians’ angry petition to the House of Lords against the Darcys, presented on 23 Feb. 1674, was lost when Parliament was prorogued the following day. HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 46-47. In May 1674 the attorney general Sir Francis North, later Baron Guilford, assured Darcy’s courtier uncle, Marmaduke Darcy^‡, that the king would try to have proceedings in the case halted, for ‘I believe the world expects the king should show some favour to a family that has deserved so well of the crown.’ CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 268; Eg. 3385, ff. 4-5. On at least two other occasions Darcy turned to Danby to acquire offices for nephews and sons, and when Danby forwarded Darcy’s request for a military commission for his son Philip to the secretary of state Sir Joseph Williamson^‡, he appended the recommendation, ‘Besides his quality, you are enough witness of his constant and faithful serving of the crown’. Eg. 3328, f. 117; CSP Dom. 1678, p. 458.

Darcy stood down from the Commons at the election of spring 1679 to allow the selection of his brother-in-law (both were married to daughters of William Seymour, 2nd duke of Somerset), Charles Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, as his replacement, as he had agreed to do as far back as 1675. Stowe 745, f. 109. But Clifford of Lanesborough and his fellow knight of the shire for Yorkshire, Henry Fairfax^‡, 4th Baron Fairfax of Cameron [S], both favoured exclusion. In order to ensure that Darcy’s ‘court’ vote was not lost, he was summoned to the Lords by a writ of acceleration dated 1 Nov. 1680, only a few days after the long-prorogued second Exclusion Parliament met for business on 21 October. His acceleration as ‘Baron Conyers’ was unusual, indeed unprecedented, in that his is the only case where the eldest son of a baron was summoned in one of his father’s secondary baronies; usually such writs were reserved for sons of peers at the rank of earl or above. In December 1682, no doubt to formalize retrospectively this highly irregular acceleration of a son of a mere baron, Baron Conyers’s aged and invalid father, Baron Darcy and Conyers, was created earl of Holdernesse.

Darcy received his writ on 2 Nov. 1680, as he proudly informed Sir William Dugdale, and was introduced to the House as Baron Conyers the following day. Eg. 3864, f. 1v. There was a question from the beginning of where he should sit in the House with a title which was formally held by his father at that time, and he was forced to leave the House as it debated the point of precedence. It was eventually decided that he should be placed in the House’s seating as if he actually were Baron Conyers, that is below William Stourton, 12th Baron Stourton. Lord Conyers proceeded to attend the House for a further 35 sittings of that Parliament until he left on 18 Dec., and he was named to three select committees, including that to consider the statutes against recusants with an eye to providing relief for dissenting Protestants. On 15 Nov. 1680 he voted to reject the exclusion bill at its first reading. Other of his votes were, surprisingly, less agreeable to the court. On 23 Nov. he voted in favour of appointing a joint committee with the Commons to consider the dangerous state of the kingdom. On 7 Dec. he voted the Catholic, William Howard, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason.

In the weeks preceding the Parliament of March 1681 Danby forecast that Conyers would support his petition for bail from the Tower and Danby’s son Edward Osborne^‡, styled Viscount Latimer, was pleased to inform his father of Conyers’s arrival at Oxford on 23 Mar. 1681, the day before Danby’s followers were planning to present the petition. HMC 14th Rep. IX. 425. Conyers remained for the following four days, during which he was named to the large committee to receive further information regarding the ‘horrid plot’ against the king, until the snap dissolution of 28 March. He continued to be a friend and advocate for Danby and his family in the years following. With Danby still in the Tower, it was Latimer who maintained frequent social relations with Conyers when both were in Yorkshire. Eg. 3334, ff. 25-26; UNL, Pw1 662. In early 1684 Conyers was also one of the signatories in support of Danby’s successful petition for bail. Eg. 3358 H.

From the time of his father’s creation as earl of Holdernesse in December 1682, Lord Conyers became styled by a new courtesy title, as Lord Darcy. In the eyes of the House, though, he was still Lord Conyers by writ of acceleration, and as such he attended James II’s Parliament in 1685 diligently. He missed only 14 sitting days throughout the Parliament, but most of his attention was spent on its first part in the spring, when he attended all but one meeting and was named to six committees, including that for the bill against the clandestine marriage of minors – a matter which would have touched him personally considering the accusations levelled against him and his son in 1674. After the adjournment he only came to the last five sitting days before the Parliament was prorogued on 20 Nov. 1685 and he sat in the House for the last time on 22 Nov. 1686, when Parliament was again prorogued.

From 1687 at least, contemporaries considered Lord Conyers an opponent of the king’s attempt to repeal the Test Acts and penal statutes. Certainly his eldest son and heir, John Darcy^‡, was a leading figure in the Revolution of 1688 in the north. Duckett, Penal Laws, 96-97; Reresby Mems. 399, 401-2, 524. It may have been he who effected the reconciliation between Danby and William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, which smoothed the way for the Williamite occupation of York and Nottingham. John Darcy died unexpectedly on 6 Jan. 1689, a death which apparently was kept secret for a number of days, for on 10 Jan. the returning officer formally submitted the papers returning him as Member for Richmond in the Convention.

On the fourth day of the Convention, 25 Jan. 1689, the House addressed a missive to Conyers demanding his attendance at its important proceedings, but his letter of 31 Jan., explaining his incapacity owing to his weakness and the recent death of his son, was accepted and his absence was formally excused on 6 February. He added to his tale of woe following a subsequent peremptory summons of 2 Mar. 1689 when two of his servants appeared before the House on 13 Mar. to present his excuses and his letter explaining that his own debilitating illness, the death of his son, with the consequent need to take care of his now fatherless grandchildren and the weakness and impending death of his own father all prevented him from leaving his northern estates. The House summoned him again on 28 May, but his excuse of his and his father’s illness was again accepted on 8 June. HMC Lords, ii. 14, 37, 114; Add. 17677 II, ff. 79-80. His father the earl of Holdernesse did die on 14 June 1689, but Conyers Darcy never did attend the House as the 2nd earl of Holdernesse and only outlived his father by three years before his own death on 13 Dec. 1692. He died intestate and it is likely, though not certain, that the consortium of administrators to whom his estate was granted (and whose inventory valued Holdernesse’s personal estate and arrears of rent due in February 1693 at just under £868) were to act as guardians for the widowed Holdernesse’s orphaned grandchildren, the eldest of which, Robert Darcy, inherited the estates and earldom as a minor aged 11.