Described in 1623 as ‘an honest man who knows more about the sword than the pen’, Conway was the secretary of state who helped to guide England into war with Spain two years later.
As a youth Conway ‘was wild, and never could endure his book, but ran away from school’, which probably explains his idiosyncratic handwriting and eccentric spelling. He was initially intended to marry the eldest daughter of a Worcestershire gentleman, Anthony Bourne. Sir John Conway became involved in managing Bourne’s tangled finances in 1577, in expectation of a family alliance, and as late as 1583 it was assumed that this would involve Conway. By then, however, Bourne’s mounting debts meant that a much smaller dowry was on offer, and accordingly Conway married instead into a prominent Gloucestershire family, the Tracys.
Conway inherited his father’s adventurous spirit, and was probably the ‘Mr. Connawaye’ who delivered government dispatches to the Dutch garrison town of Bergen-op-Zoom in 1587. He was certainly in the Low Countries by mid-1589, when he assumed the unofficial command of his father’s company of foot at Ostend, though he continued to carry messages between the Continent and London. In August 1590 he was wounded while on a raid near East Dunkirk.
Conway returned to Brill as lieutenant-governor, effectively the garrison commander since successive governors were absentees. He proved to be an energetic leader, in August 1597 defending the unauthorized local practice of funding a preacher through a levy on soldiers’ pay on the grounds that this minister boosted morale, and in the following year promoting a scheme for Brill to be established as a staple for English merchants. Conway brought his family over from England, and named his next child Brilliana in the town’s honour.
Conway’s financial position improved in 1603 when he inherited his patrimony, including a seat at Ragley purchased by his father 12 years earlier.
In February 1610 Conway entered the Commons via a by-election at Penryn, doubtless as the nominee of his patron Cecil, now lord treasurer Salisbury, whose Killigrew kinsmen controlled the borough. He is not known to have spoken during this fourth session of the 1604 Parliament, but he was nominated to 16 committees. The 14 bills that he was appointed to scrutinize covered such subjects as shipping and mariners, the export of ordnance, naturalization of ambassadors’ children, and Salisbury’s New Exchange project (28 Feb., 17 Mar., 27 Apr. and 23 June). He was also named to two select committees, one on 11 May to prepare for the presentation of grievances to the king, the other on 18 May to examine whether Sir John Davies, whose restitution bill lay before the Commons, had become a Catholic.
Back at Brill, Conway undertook a commission from Prince Henry to recruit a Delft artist, Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, to his service. Although he failed in this particular task, in late May 1611 the prince employed him to inform Prince Maurice that he was being considered for the order of the Garter. Emboldened by these marks of royal favour, Conway began sending monthly newsletters to Henry’s secretary, Adam Newton, mostly discussing the relative strength of the Protestant and Catholic camps on the Continent. Although initially obsequious in tone, these letters gradually became more outspoken. Conscious of the internal pressures which already threatened to fragment the United Provinces, Conway viewed the emergence of Arminianism there with foreboding: ‘the broaching and fostering of these opinions and factions hath not been without design, to shake the foundation of this government, by bringing in a freedom of all kinds of religion’.
If it shall be possible and found good by His Majesty, the Defender of the Faith, to give his blessed and gracious daughter into Spain, and her children to be bred up in that religion, and for the Catholic king to be dispensed with to match with a blessed Christian princess, the dangers His Majesty and his royal issue are exposed to from the Spanish and Jesuitical practices, are such as I tremble to think of them.
On balance, Conway believed that Spain would never actually go through with such a union, being too much in thrall to the pope, and that a marriage treaty was simply a smokescreen to conceal its imperial objectives. Nevertheless, even talk of Anglo-Spanish negotiations was damaging to international Protestant morale. Fearful of James’s intentions, he instead pinned his hopes on his heir, and in May 1612 openly urged that Prince Henry reject any Catholic marriage proposals.
News of Salisbury’s death must have reached Conway within days of him sending that intemperate missive to Newton, while the prince’s own demise just six months later deprived him of his only other significant patron. To compound these losses, at Christmas 1612 Conway was almost killed by a lunatic at Brill, and his wife died in the following February. His remarriage in 1614 to a wealthy London widow doubtless provided some personal consolation, but his public career seemed to be drawing to a close. In 1616 Brill and the other Cautionary Towns were sold back to the United Provinces, and although Conway received a £500 pension as compensation for his loss of office, he had little else to show for nearly three decades of service except a reputation for ‘heroical acts and famous exploits of war’.
It was the worsening international situation which finally brought Conway into the centre of affairs. In the aftermath of the acceptance of the Bohemian crown by James I’s son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, Europe was dividing into two armed camps along broadly religious lines. In July 1620 Conway and Sir Richard Weston* were dispatched on a roving embassy through the Low Countries and Germany, with a brief to confirm English neutrality and avert an invasion of the Palatinate by Catholic forces. Their mission was doomed from the start. In August they witnessed Spinola’s first rout of the princes of the Protestant Union, and by the time they returned to England in March 1621 Bohemia and much of the Palatinate had fallen.
Conway reached England too late to stand in the 1620 general election, but in July 1621 the corporation of Evesham agreed to provide him with a seat which had fallen vacant there, presumably on the basis of his local standing as a Worcestershire landowner. However, the by-election was delayed until November, and his presence at Westminster was recorded only by his nomination on 1 Dec. to the conference on the bill against informers.
Conway’s appointment to the Privy Council in June 1622 surprised some observers, since he seemed to have been chosen purely on personal merit. In reality he owed his place to Buckingham, who was now consulting him regularly about foreign affairs. Almost immediately reports circulated that a further promotion to secretary of state would follow, and with the fall of Heidelberg in September the need for military experience in government became more urgent, although (Sir) Robert Naunton* managed to fend off dismissal until January 1623.
Conway’s malleability was tested almost immediately. His personal preferences were well-known. So openly pro-Dutch that it was rumoured the United Provinces had helped him to buy his office, he also used his ministerial influence to assist foreign Protestant refugees.
As the opinion at Court began to turn against a Spanish alliance, Conway actively pressed for an alternative. On 21 Nov. 1623 he was added to the powerful committee on foreign affairs, which on 20 Dec. recommended the summoning of Parliament, an essential pre-condition for war with Spain. Around this time he also produced a detailed proposal for an international Protestant alliance which could launch several simultaneous attacks on Habsburg territories, and, he believed, rein in the Catholic menace in three years. Fundamental to his thinking was the conviction that other Protestant states would fight only if England provided a lead, but it was not going to be easy to persuade the king to take the initiative. Accordingly, in early January Conway and Buckingham wrote to the United Provinces, encouraging them to propose a military alliance, the idea being that this would allow the peace-loving James to avoid being seen as originating hostilities.
In this situation it was important that the 1624 Parliament received a clear lead on the issue of Spain, and Conway did his best to obtain seats in the Commons for his dependants. As well as securing for himself his former seat at Evesham, he turned for assistance to his kinsmen Arthur Harris and Fulke Greville, now Lord Brooke, and his friend Lord Zouche, though with mixed results. His eldest son, Sir Edward, was returned at Warwick and also at Rye, where Conway had apparently intended to nominate a younger son, Thomas. The latter was duly elected at Rye once his brother opted to represent Warwick. Harris narrowly failed to deliver Conway a seat at St. Ives, and an approach to Helston was rejected out of hand.
Conway played a surprisingly minor role in the Parliament’s proceedings, making just eight recorded speeches and being nominated to seven committees or conferences. In part this was due to his relative inexperience of the Commons, while his official duties frequently kept him away from the House. As a secretary of state, he helped to administer the oaths of membership on 16 Feb., a process which was temporarily halted by news of the death of the duke of Lennox. He attended the conference with the Lords on 24 Feb. at which Buckingham outlined the history of the Spanish treaties, assisting the duke with supporting documentation, such as his letter of 13 Nov. 1623 which instructed Bristol to bring discussions to a head. Buoyed up by Parliament’s initial reactions to these revelations, he travelled to Newmarket immediately afterwards to brief the king, ‘cheerful and very merry’.
Shall we be afraid of the name of a sum which till it be used remains still at our own disposing? His Majesty’s declaration will make all safe. The certainty of assistance must make [a] way to that. Let us declare it clearly and roundly, whereby besides the benefit of the public, we shall satisfy the prince’s expectation and return a good reward to that great lord [Buckingham] who hath taken much pains to bring matters to this pass.
However, the House persisted in discussing smaller sums, and its final resolution, which Conway was nominated to help draft, offered only three subsidies and three fifteenths (20 March). In the event, this proved sufficient to force the king’s hand, and on 25 Mar. Conway was appointed to a special joint committee to prepare the public declaration of the breach with Spain.
Nevertheless, this was no more than a start, as the secretary was painfully aware. For the moment he could afford to jest. When the Spanish ambassador complained a few days later about talk of an English army marching on Madrid, and asserted that the local women would defeat it, Conway responded that Spain ‘needed not to think of an army of women to beat us ... for one woman [the Infanta] would ... have kept all English from going thither otherwise than in friendship; [but] if now they should ... find such valiant women there they should not wonder at it, having heard of the like at home in [15]88’. In reality, though, war remained a distant prospect, and the United Provinces’ envoys were growing impatient at the lack of progress. Conway held informal talks with the Dutch delegation in early April, but he could offer the envoys no guarantees, and caused ill-feeling by suggesting a return to the practice of cautionary towns. Meanwhile, James had taken offence at the Commons’ petition against recusants, and warned Conway that if Members tried to make the subsidy grant conditional on his acceptance of the petition, he would withdraw his formal message to Spain breaking off the treaties.
Despite his lacklustre performance at Westminster, Conway remained very much at the heart of government during the following year. With parliamentary supply finally granted, the way was ostensibly clear for the implementation of his grand military strategy. However, while the secretary’s appraisal of the forces needed to drive back the Habsburgs was not unrealistic, his expectation of the speed with which they could be assembled was wildly optimistic. At home, the money needed to put men into the field was slow coming in, which in turn caused problems with the recruitment and transportation of soldiers. Although a member of the Council of War, in practice Conway was rarely free to attend its meetings, and instead engaged in periodically fraught correspondence with its members. In his desperation to force the pace of events he even issued instructions which, as a former soldier, he must have suspected were unworkable. In November 1624, for example, he ordered the captains of the county levies to find conduct money out of their own pockets. When the captains refused, Buckingham intervened, and offered the concession that they should choose their own junior officers, a breach of army discipline which Conway then felt obliged to obstruct.
The process of assembling continental allies was no less problematic, and although in this sphere Conway was much more at the centre of events, in practice he had even less control over developments. He did all he could to push the pace of discussions with the Dutch ambassadors, helping to broker an agreement in June 1624 for the dispatch of a volunteer force to bolster the defences of the United Provinces, but within weeks relations between the two countries were soured by the news of the Amboyna massacre. Although blamed by the East India Company for the English government’s initially restrained response, Conway jointly authorized reprisals against Dutch shipping in September.
Despite these setbacks, Conway’s position in government remained unchallenged in the short term. By July 1624 he was reportedly falling out of favour with James, but the politically delicate nature of the French negotiations helped to ensure that he remained indispensable to Buckingham and Charles, who were now effectively running affairs. When the marriage articles were sworn on 15 Dec., only the king, the prince, Buckingham, the French envoys and Conway were present. Three days later, Dudley Carleton reported that Charles was referring all business to the duke, ‘so that he has head and hands full, and there is only one man whom he trusts’.
Conway’s own labours were rather better rewarded, but not on the scale that he might have wished. As he ruefully observed in September 1625, ‘service and offices make fair shows and promises but are no inheritance’. Indeed, he claimed 18 months earlier that his official income, which was then in arrears, covered less than half of the secretary’s expenses. By December 1623 the king had promised him a £2,000 pension out of the alum farm, but the money depended on the government agreeing terms with a new patentee, and despite Conway’s best efforts to speed along the process, the farm was still not properly settled two years later.
Following the accession of Charles I, Conway’s position within the inner circle of government was rapidly confirmed. In addition to the renewal of his existing offices, he became lord lieutenant of Hampshire in May 1625, and shortly afterwards received a £2,000 pension out of the Court of Wards. In the following October, it was even briefly rumoured that he would become lord treasurer. At this juncture he remained high in favour with both king and favourite, and his close association with the latter was emphasized during the 1626 Parliament, when the earl of Bristol attempted to impeach both Buckingham and Conway over their treatment of him.