Constituency Dates
Newport I.o.W. 1784 – 1790
Tregony 16 June 1788 – 1790
Wendover 1790 – 96
Portsmouth 1796 – 11 Sept. 1801
Family and Education
b. 29 Apr. 1759, 5th s. of Francis, 1st Earl of Hertford, and bro. of Francis, Visct. Beauchamp, and of Hon. George, Henry, Robert and William Seymour Conway. m. 2 Apr. 1786, Lady Anne Horatia Waldegrave, da. and coh. of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, 5s. 2da.
Offices Held

Entered R.N. 1770; lt. 1776; cdr. 1778; capt. 1779.

biography text

During the American war Seymour Conway served in Newfoundland, the West Indies, the Mediterranean, and on the expedition to relieve Gibraltar. Horace Walpole who liked him best of Hertford’s sons, described him (to Mann 16 Mar. 1786) as ‘one of the first marine characters’, and (to Thomas Walpole jun. 8 Apr.) ‘one of the most amiable men in England, and of a character the most universally esteemed’.

The circumstances of his return for Newport are not known, nor why he retired in 1786. No vote or speech is recorded during his first period in Parliament. At Tregony, where he sat on the interest of Lord Falmouth, a Government supporter, he replaced Sir Lloyd Kenyon, attorney-general, who had been made a peer on becoming lord chief justice of the King’s bench. Yet he was, Walpole wrote to Mann 29 May 1786, ‘a principal favourite of the Prince of Wales’, and he voted against Pitt on the Regency question.

He died on board ship off Jamaica, 11 Sept. 1801.

Author
J.B.
Volume
Commons 1754-1790