CONINGSBY, Humphrey (c.1622-71), of Hampton Court, Hope-under-Dinmore, Herefs.

Coningsby was elected for Herefordshire in a by-election after his father had been expelled from the Long Parliament as a beneficiary of a monopoly. He was below majority age at the time of his election, and he must have been in the House a very short time, if at all. Certainly, the Herefordshire royalists addressed themselves to both Sir Robert Harley* and to Coningsby in March and April 1642, when they drew up statements of their position. They sought an end to the religious reform programme of which Harley had been a champion, and urged their representatives to make sure the king’s financial problems were ended by granting him tonnage and poundage for life, and complying with his wishes. Their addresses read like a manifesto, and whether Coningsby was in the Commons to act on their wishes was less significant than the statements themselves.5Add. 70003, ff. 227-8, 238-9. The reply in the name of Harley and Coningsby reminded their constituents of the constitution of the three estates, king, Lords and Commons and their indivisibility. It seems unlikely that the youth Coningsby had any hand in the drafting.6J. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan (Cambridge, 1990), 133.

Coningsby seems to have made no impression on the House, and it must be presumed that during the summer of 1642 at the latest he withdrew from Parliament. Fitzwilliam Coningsby was active in recruiting a regiment of foot for the king, under the 1st marquess of Hertford (William Seymour†), from December 1642, and so Humphrey’s rank of lieutenant-colonel, which he kept through the civil war, was probably held in his father’s regiment.7Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 113v. Probably because of his youthfulness, Coningsby was not given any local commissions, either of array or of taxation. After Hereford fell, albeit temporarily, to Sir William Waller*, Coningsby father and son were taken to Bristol castle, to be imprisoned there until that city fell to Prince Rupert. On 8 May 1643, Humphrey was disabled from sitting for having borne arms against Parliament. He then joined the king’s court at Oxford, and sat in the royalist Parliament there. This earned him a second order disabling him from taking his seat again (22 Jan. 1644). He lent his name to the letter by the Members at Oxford to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex urging him to seek peace.8CJ iii. 75b, 374a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. He was with his father at the surrender of Worcester in July 1646, and afterwards made his way to Pendennis in Cornwall, being present in that garrison when it fell in August.9CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 456, 467.

Coningsby was living in London in 1657, when his only son, Thomas, was baptized at St Paul’s, Covent Garden.10Regs. St Paul’s Covent Garden (Harl. Soc. regs. v), 9. He was suspected of involvement in the rising of Sir George Boothe* in 1659, and succeeded to his father’s attenuated and debt-laden estate in 1666. He made no attempt to play a part in the public affairs of Herefordshire, and may have been in prison for debt for much of the late 1660s. He died in 1671. A descendant described how young Thomas Coningsby† struggled ‘against the disadvantages of a neglected education, although he never overcame the evil effects of a want of early discipline and self-control’: a tacit condemnation of Humphrey’s skills as a parent. None the less, Thomas was elected 13 times as MP for Leominster.11Add. 47128, f. 53; HP Commons 1690-1715.