CONINGSBY, Fitzwilliam (d. 1666), of Hampton Court, Hope-under-Dinmore, Herefs.

Hampton Court was in the possession of the Coningsby family from 1509, purchased on the profits of judicial office. Before then, the family was seated in Hertfordshire, but was well enough established in Herefordshire by Elizabethan times for Sir Thomas Coningsby†, this Member’s father, to sit for it in three Parliaments.30HP Commons 1558-1603. Fitzwilliam Coningsby was given to extravagance as a youth, and his kinsman Thomas Meautys* was probably among the first of a long line of lenders who helped him out over the years, supplying him with £33 ‘at an hour’s warning’.31Herefs. RO, W15/2. Coningsby first represented his county in the 1621 Parliament, but sat on only three committees and made no impression on the Journal clerk or on any diarist.32HP Commons 1604-1629.

In his will, Coningsby’s father entrusted him with the responsibility of discharging his affairs as sole executor, hoping that Fitzwilliam would become frugal and more responsible in later life. He had little choice. He could rest his hopes only on Fitzwilliam for the bringing to fruition his project of establishing a hospital in Hereford for war veterans, because he was ‘the last of six sons’ to survive.33Duncumb, Collections, i. 406. Fitzwilliam’s reputation for fecklessness persisted, however, and may be the reason why he sat in no later Parliaments before the second assembly of 1640. In the late 1630s he was borrowing heavily, and by then had become an associate of Archbishop William Laud.34W. Laud, Works ed. W. Scott, J. Bliss (Oxford, 1847-60), iii. 413. He was probably influenced in his religious outlook by Sir John Scudamore†, Viscount Scudamore [I], the renovator and patron of Abbey Dore. Coningsby set up a stained glass window at Hampton Court chapel in 1629, and it was probably in the same spirit that in 1633 he beautified his old school in Hereford cathedral with a ‘frontispiece, with the half desks on either side, and their appurtenances’.35CCC 2067, 2069; Duncumb, Collections, i. 589. He was an active commissioner for knighthood compositions in the early 1630s, and held a number of local offices that suggest no dissatisfaction on his part with the Caroline government.36C115/102/7671; E178/5333, f. 10.

Coningsby was returned to the Long Parliament as knight of the shire, holding the second seat after Sir Robert Harley.37C219/43/1/207. The election followed the pattern of 1621, when there was an agreement in place by the date of the meeting to select the Members. On 9 October, Harley and Coningsby respectfully informed Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, who had an interest in Herefordshire, of the county’s choice. It was clear that Essex was being asked to approve, but in certain expectation that he should.38Add. 70002, f. 307. Once again, Coningsby played only a modest role in his re-emergence as a Parliament man, by any standards, let alone by those of the energetic Harley. He was named to a conference with the Lords on the case of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), on 30 November 1640, and three months later was on a committee for a bill to confirm the king’s grants of property to the queen (17 Feb. 1641). He took the Protestation on 3 May, but then seems to have pursued his own interests, trying to secure bills to rescue his own estate from debt and for establishing his father’s hospital.39CJ ii. 39b, 87b, 133a, 156b, 160a. His bill, probably for the hospital, survived a cull of bills in July, and was brought to a successful conclusion the following month (4 Aug.). Perhaps because of his interest in legislation relating to private estates, he was named to committees for bills that would benefit the Denton, Thynne and Popham families, but was named to no committees on wider public business.40CJ ii. 164b, 212b, 226b, 228a, 234b, 239b.

During the remedial legislation of 1641, the soap monopoly of the 1630s came under scrutiny. Coningsby found himself declared a beneficiary of the monopoly, and was forced to withdraw from the House (30 Oct. 1641). In his defence before the examining committee, he asserted that the projectors had sought his signature to the indenture of 1636 establishing the project while assuring him he could come to no harm by it. Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s lack of sympathy for Coningsby’s argument was probably echoed by many: ‘for a free man to say that he did it against his will who should have his wits and reason about him is not to be admitted for an excuse’.41D’Ewes (N), 56. Sir Robert Harley argued that Coningsby should not be sent for as a delinquent while he sat in the House, and after a lengthy debate it was resolved that he should be made to withdraw from the House (30 Oct. 1641). The news was slow in reaching Leominster. As late as 12 November, Brilliana Harley had not heard for certain that her husband’s colleague had been expelled, and hoped that if Coningsby were put out, the county would be ‘careful to choose a good one’ in his place.42Add. 70003, f. 169. The Harley family were taken unawares by the speed of the new writ; Coningsby’s son Humphrey was chosen (20 Nov. 1641) at least partly because Brilliana failed to mobilise her tenants, having received no directions from Sir Robert.43Add. 70003, ff. 170, 173, 173v. Now out of the House, Fitzwilliam Coningsby nevertheless progressed his parliamentary business by proxy. Although the hospital matter had been resolved by statute, Coningsby’s bill to settle his own estate needed a new champion, and he settled on Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, son of the Catholic Henry, 5th earl of Worcester, to progress his affairs by taking a bill to the Lords. Coningsby’s choice of agents, at a time when Members from Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, including Thomas Tomkins of Weobley, had identified Worcester as a popish ally of Strafford, was ominous.44CJ ii. 356b.

By February 1642, embryonic ‘sides’ were beginning to emerge in Herefordshire in the prelude to civil war. One of Harley’s correspondents noted how Coningsby, whose influence was extensive in Leominster, ‘loves not Mr [John] Tombes, nor any man that likes the leaving of ceremonies’.45Add. 70003, f. 204. Tombes was the puritan vicar of Leominster, who in May 1641 had turned the table in the church back from its altar-like disposition, in symbolic rejection of Laudianism. In February 1642, Coningsby and Walter Brabazon attempted a defiant defence of episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer by petition.46HMC Portland, iii. 76; Add. 70003, f. 204. They saw the bishops as a bulwark against ‘the corruption of popery’, and cathedrals as ‘monuments of our forefathers’ charity, the reward of present literature, and furtherance of piety’.47Webb, Memorials, ii. 337-8; J. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan (Cambridge, 1990), 130-1. They made no mention of ceremonies, however, beyond alluding to the ‘blessed sacraments’, suggesting that Coningsby was prudent enough not to swim directly against the tide in puritan Herefordshire. At the time of the petition in favour of episcopacy, Parliament tried to command the leading gentry to secure the county magazine, but the instruction met with apathy, including from Coningsby.48Add. 70003, f. 204. The line that he and eight other gentry justices of the peace such as Thomas Wigmore and Sir William Croft† took in a letter to the Herefordshire Members of Parliament was rather that reform had now gone far enough. They doubted whether the programme of attracting signatures to the Protestation was legal, and were certain that it divided king from Parliament, and each House from the other. Popery was being removed, and now the Prayer Book should be enforced and sectaries brought under control.49Add. 70003, ff. 227-8v. They perceived no further threat from foreigners, and were sceptical as to the value of a Parliament estranged from the crown. The best way to ensure English liberties was for Parliament to bend to a compliance with the king’s wishes.50Add. 70003, ff. 238-9.

Coningsby was energetic in mobilizing support for the king in the summer of 1642. He joined a muster at Hereford on 14 July, and was said to have assembled over a hundred volunteers. He took over Sir Robert Harley’s militia troop. The non-commissioned officers declared themselves happier to serve under Coningsby than anyone else, if they had to lose Harley, which suggests how political differences had still not penetrated far down the social scale. Brilliana Harley noted that Sir William Croft, formerly a friend of neither Coningsby nor Scudamore, was now reconciled to them as the royalist party began to coalesce.51HMC Portland, iii. 90, 92. Coningsby also called the corporation of Leominster together to raise money for the king’s cause. There may have been few offers of money, but Coningsby himself pledged £66, the equivalent of six horsemen for three months. In September, the warrant of the Speaker was issued for the arrest of the Herefordshire royalist leaders, including Coningsby, for having accepted the king’s commission of array.52HMC Portland, iii. 93, 94, 98-9.

Coningsby himself went to York as messenger for the Herefordshire commissioners of array before the king left the northern capital for Nottingham. Coningsby’s travels took him away from Hereford, and the absence of his energy and organising talent doubtless contributed to the loss of Hereford to Parliament.53Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 113. Despite the activity of the summer, the royalists were ill-prepared for the occupation of the city by Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford in October 1642. Coningsby left Herefordshire and ‘wandered up and down’ until he made contact with the marquess of Hertford in Wales.54Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 113v. The parliamentarian force was withdrawn from Hereford on 3 December, however, when Stamford found himself isolated and unsupported. Coningsby then received commissions from the marquess of Hertford as colonel of a foot regiment, and from the earl of Worcester as governor of the city, but his tenure there was short.55Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 113v. The king made him sheriff of his county when at Oatlands in Surrey in November 1642, but Coningsby was in the field by mid-January 1643, at the head of a regiment of 685 officers and men. He threatened the tenants of the Harleys with death if they paid their rents, and promising to drive away their cattle.56A True Catalogue of all the Sheriffes (1642, 669.f.6.93); Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 114v; HMC Portland, iii. 103-6. He summoned Brampton Bryan to surrender (4 Mar.): Brilliana Harley robustly but carefully rejected his demands, turning his own phraseology against him by denying she understood ‘upon what ground the refusal of giving you what is mine (by the laws of the land) will prove me, or anyone else that is with me, traitors’.57HMC Portland, iii. 105; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 165.

For logistical reasons, the siege of Brampton was then abandoned, and Coningsby found his troops drawn off by Worcester’s son Lord Herbert for deployment at Highnam, near Gloucester, the home of Sir Robert Cooke*. This was a disaster for the royalists, whose army under Herbert was forced to surrender there.58Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 115; R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort (1982), 54-5. A sick and demoralised Coningsby asked Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland, if he could surrender his commission, but received no reply.59Bodl. Tanner 303, f. 115. He had already identified Viscount Scudamore as a lukewarm supporter of the royalist cause at the start of the war, attributing to Scudamore’s indecisive behaviour the slowness of the county to rally to the king. Now Coningsby found himself the victim of competition between the aristocratic commanders in the region for supremacy. Notionally still governor of Hereford, he nevertheless found himself challenged for the position by Sir Richard Cave*, who claimed authority from Prince Maurice. Coningsby claimed he was pushed aside by Cave, but the context of his claim was the fall of Hereford to Sir William Waller* on 25 April. Some of Coningsby’s men seem to have impeded the surrender. The Herefordshire royalists fell to mutual recriminations, and although Coningsby was not court-martialled for the loss of Hereford a second time, some blame was attached to him.60Bodl. Tanner 303, ff. 116-23v; Webb, Memorials, i. 282-3; Hutton, Royalist War Effort, 57. He was taken first to Gloucester, then imprisoned in Bristol Castle. When Patrick Forth, the king’s lieutenant-general, threatened reprisals against parliamentarian prisoners-of-war if the Bristol royalist plotters were hanged, Nathaniel Fiennes I*, the governor, identified the Herefordshire prisoners, including Coningsby, as the next to hang if Forth carried out his threat. Coningsby was released when Bristol was surrendered to Prince Rupert on 26 July 1643.61HMC Portland, iii. 87; Webb, Memorials, i. 296-7.

After regaining his liberty, Coningsby chose to join the king. In June 1644, he was thought by his wife to be in the field with the royalist army, and as a diehard cavalier did his best to disrupt and frustrate the drafting of the articles by which Worcester surrendered to Thomas Rainborowe* in July 1646.62Webb, Memorials, i. 313, ii. 45, 273; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 456. By the terms of Worcester’s surrender, Coningsby was supposed to leave the country. His son Humphrey was at Pendennis in Cornwall when the garrison there surrendered and many royalists took ship, so it is probable that he did emigrate. Coningsby was in England in 1649, when came to the attention of the Committee for Compounding*. He requested to be able to compound on Worcester articles, and pleaded his vast debts in mitigation. His fine was set at £4,243, one fifth of his estate. His fine was reduced to £3,600 in June 1651, by which time all but his Shropshire estate was extended for debt. As late as June 1656, Coningsby was still heavily encumbered with debt, and seems not to have paid any of his fine. It may have been his parlous financial circumstances that prevented him from playing any active role in royalist plotting during the 1650s, although his son Thomas was suspected of involvement in the rising of Sir George Boothe* in 1659.63CCC 2064-71; CJ vii. 215b. Any ambitions he may have harboured for a return to political life after 1660 were hamstrung by his debts. He recovered his local offices, including the stewardship of Leominster, but in the election for the Cavalier Parliament the sheriff excluded him from the poll in Leominster as a debtor.64CJ viii. 392b. Coningsby died on 23 August 1666; his grandson Thomas Coningsby† sat for Leominster as a whig in 13 Parliaments between 1680 and 1716.65HP Commons 1660-1690.