CONYNGHAM, Henry Joseph, Earl of Mount Charles (1795-1824), of Mount Charles Hall, co. Donegal.

At the first opportunity after he came of age, Mount Charles was returned for Donegal on his father’s interest. While up at Cambridge he was remembered as ‘a tall, stout, good-humoured fellow, with the rattle of whose boisterous laugh the drowsy echoes of our principal quadrangle sufficiently familiarized us’.1Teignmouth, Reminiscences, i. 39. At Westminster, where he was once singled out by an irate opponent for his ‘clamour’, he supported government, speaking several times in his first Parliament in support of his colleague Hart’s campaign against the system of dealing with illicit distillation. On 3 May 1819 he was ‘going out to vote for the Catholics ... when somebody pulled him back, told him he would lose his county by it, so he changed his mind.2Chatsworth mss, Lady Morpeth to Devonshire, 5 May 1819. He voted with the minority for the repeal of sea coal duties, 20 May, and in the majority for the extension of the franchise at Penryn, 22 June 1819. His mother’s association with the Prince Regent attached him to the Court.3Jnl. of Mrs Arbuthnot, i. 67; Geo. IV Letters, iii 1112. He died at Nice, after failing health had obliged him to go abroad, 26 Dec. 1824.