Drawing on her research into Canterbury for the House of Commons, 1832-1868 project, our research fellow Dr Naomi Lloyd-Jones explores the political life of Elizabeth, Marchioness Conyngham (1769-1861). Best known as George IV’s final mistress, Conyngham‘s electioneering activity in Canterbury offers an important example of the behind-the-scenes roles wealthy women could play in politics during the nineteenth century.

Famous as ‘the regnante’ and ‘vice queen’, Elizabeth, Marchioness Conyngham (or Lady Conyngham as she was commonly known) was the last mistress of George IV. According to her great-grandson, the writer Sir Osbert Sitwell, Conyngham’s relationship with George IV made her one of the ‘most caricatured and ridiculed’ people in Georgian Britain.

Conyngham also attracted contemporary attention for her pursuit of her family’s political interests beyond the court, the history of which has been comparatively overlooked. Contrary to one biographer’s claim that after the king’s death Conyngham ‘virtually disappears from the historical record’, traces of her life are discoverable in the electoral politics of early Victorian Canterbury – a notoriously corrupt constituency located near her country estate of Bifrons in Kent.

The ‘Conyngham influence’ (which supposedly derived from what was known locally as the ‘Bifrons purse’) can be gleaned from press coverage of elections contested by her younger son, Lord Albert Conyngham, during the 1830s and 1840s, by her son-in-law, Sir William Somerville, in the 1850s, and from evidence given to the 1853 royal commission on electoral bribery in Canterbury. As with contemporary portrayals of her relationship with George IV, much of this source material is from the perspective of her family’s opponents. Nevertheless, it does give us a sense of the ways in which aristocratic, wealthy women could be involved in political life following the 1832 Reform Act.

Born Elizabeth Denison in 1769, in 1794 she married Henry Burton Conyngham (who was created 1st Marquess Conyngham in 1816). Lady Conyngham is thought to have been mistress to George IV from around 1819-20 until his death in 1830, when she was in her 50s. During the 1820s, Conyngham and her family lived with George IV at Windsor and Brighton at the king’s expense. George IV was said to have had an ‘almost boyish attachment’ to Conyngham and reportedly spent much of his coronation in 1821 ‘nodding and winking … sighing and making eyes at her’. It was rumoured that one, possibly two, of Conyngham’s children were fathered by George IV. This was despite both children being born years prior to their relationship. There were also suggestions that the king intended to marry Conyngham’s daughter, Elizabeth, following Queen Caroline’s death.

Contemporary depictions of Conyngham from this period were overwhelmingly derogatory and frequently misogynistic. As Sitwell observed, she was cast by caricaturists and courtiers as ‘fat, middle-aged … stupid, ugly and grasping’. Satirical prints made wordplay of her surname and emphasised her and the king’s respective physical sizes. Such images also reflected the perception that Conyngham’s ‘ruling passion’ was ‘avarice’.

Diarists recorded that George IV ‘heap[ed] all kinds of presents upon her [Conyngham]’ and that she was ‘amassing money’. One contemporary suggested she was ‘covered with jewels’, which various sources estimate were worth around £80,000. And, according to one diplomat’s wife, Conyngham had ‘not an idea in her head; not a word to say for herself; nothing but a hand to accept pearls and diamonds with, and an enormous balcony to wear them on’. It was rumoured that her family had ‘wagonloads’ of valuables removed from Windsor during the king’s final months and spent the night he died hastily packing up what remained.

Conyngham’s reputation for ‘rapaciousness’ belied, or was perhaps intended to stand in contrast to, the financial position of her family. Her father, Joseph Denison (c.1726-1806), reportedly ‘died a millionaire’. Her brother, William Joseph Denison (1769-1849), was one of Britain’s ‘eight or ten wealthiest … businessmen’, who on his death left an estate worth £2.3 million. Most of this estate was left to Conyngham’s son, Lord Albert, while Conyngham inherited £30,000.

Some of the family wealth derived from the transatlantic slave economy. Joseph acted as an insurance broker for voyages connected with the trade in enslaved people, and the family’s banking house, Denison, Heywood and Kennard of Lombard Street, served as agent to two Liverpool firms in the ‘compensation’ process.

It was the Denison wealth that facilitated the Conyngham family’s electioneering in Canterbury. When Lord Albert first stood for Canterbury at the 1835 general election, funds to cover his expenses were sent to the city through the Denison banking house. The money was then handled by Conyngham’s steward at Bifrons, Mr Pilcher. It appears that this remained the family’s practice at subsequent contests with Pilcher later confirming that at election time money was ‘invariably’ remitted from Denison, Heywood and Kennard.

Bifrons also became an electioneering hub. In 1835 it hosted a costly election ‘entertainment’, which included a ‘magnificent’ banquet. The local Conservative press termed this a ‘feed’ or a ‘guzzle’, and suggested that it amounted to the ‘treating’ of voters on an unprecedented scale. Bifrons reportedly remained an ‘open house’ throughout the campaign.

Lord Albert’s wife, Henrietta Maria Conyngham, was also politically active. Her family, the Conservative Weld-Foresters, controlled the small agricultural borough of Wenlock. Lord Albert experienced chronic ill health throughout his career. When this prevented him from canvassing at Canterbury during the 1837 general election, Henrietta Maria reportedly campaigned on his behalf ‘very spiritedly’.

The Conservatives, who sought to create political capital from Lord Albert’s illness, made much of Henrietta Maria’s supposed ‘entreaties and persuasions’. She was portrayed as both playing upon voters’ emotions (by beseeching one ‘with tears in her eyes’ on how to vote if he ‘valued the life of her dear Albert’) and as stronger than her husband (for personally escorting out-voters to the poll).

We know little about the Conyngham women’s electioneering activities in the early 1840s. Lord Albert retired from Parliament in 1841 on health grounds, and at the 1841 general election Canterbury returned two Conservatives. However, Lord Albert’s return to politics in 1847 affords a further glimpse into his mother’s continued influence in the constituency, which seems to have been chiefly exercised financially.

When Lord Albert was returned unopposed at the March 1847 Canterbury by-election, the local Conservative press reported that Lady Conyngham had been ‘indefatigable in beating up recruits for the Liberal ranks’, acting with ‘the skill and adroitness of a practised hand’. Among these ‘refined arts of persuasion’ was her reported oversight of a system of ‘exclusive dealing’, in which Lord Albert’s supporters only patronised local tradesmen and shopkeepers willing to back their candidate.

Further allegations surrounding the nature of Lady Conyngham’s influence in Canterbury centred on the success of two Liberal candidates (including Lord Albert) at the 1847 general election. An 1853 royal commission, which was established to investigate corruption in the borough, concluded that the 1847 election result was ‘mainly due to bribery and corruption’. Thomas Pelham Clinton, one of the two defeated Conservative candidates in 1847, recalled that his party initially took a lead in the polls. However, after two hours of polling it was suddenly ‘noised all through’ Canterbury that a ‘large sum’ had ‘come down’ from either Conyngham or her brother. From then on, the Conservatives gradually slipped down the poll, with £5,000 claimed to have been spent on ensuring a Liberal victory.

According to Clinton, when the 1847 election was over, a drunken voter shook a bag of coins in his face. Explaining to Clinton that he had had no money the previous day, the voter reportedly exclaimed, ‘it was this [the bag of coins] that did it’. Although Pilcher, who was Conyngham’s steward, admitted that the Liberals had engaged in bribery in 1847 ‘in self-defence’, he denied that Conyngham had ‘found’ the funds alleged by Clinton, labelling the claim ‘most absurd’.

Pilcher also refuted the rumour that either Conyngham or the Denison banking firm played any financial role in the by-election that followed Lord Albert’s elevation to the House of Lords in 1850. This contradicted evidence heard by the commission that the Conservative candidate at the by-election had been paid £1,000 to withdraw in order to ensure the unopposed return of a Liberal. Pilcher was adamant that Conyngham herself ‘never gave a farthing’ for direct bribery or the remuneration of a bribery agent.

Conyngham’s involvement in Canterbury politics did not cease with Lord Albert’s retirement, and she continued to exert her financial power at Canterbury into her eighties. Her son-in-law, Sir William Somerville, stood unsuccessfully at the 1852 general election and represented the constituency as a Liberal from 1854 until 1865. Somerville’s Conservative opponent from 1852, Henry Butler-Johnstone, told the 1853 royal commission that he had been ‘very much afraid’ of the ‘Bifrons purse’. New to the city, he claimed to have been warned that, with her ‘very large income’, Conyngham’s ‘purse was to be opened against’ him as necessary, something he felt signalled that he was ‘fairly in the fight’, firing his determination to ‘not be beat by her’.

With the Liberal agent, Alderman Brent, a regular visitor to Bifrons, it was anticipated that, should polling start to go against Somerville, Conyngham would ‘come down handsomely with her thousands’ as ‘it was reported she always did’. Butler-Johnstone’s testimony in 1853 helped to fuel the impression in subsequent years that Somerville ‘owe[d] his seat’ to Conyngham, whose ‘influence … carrie[d] all before it’ thanks to a ‘purse stuffed to repletion’. In 1855 the local Conservative press complained that Canterbury was ‘the pocket borough of the Conyngham family’ and little more than a ‘Bifrons appanage’. And, when a Conservative challenge was mooted against Somerville in 1859, there was talk that ‘the aid of Bifrons’ would, as in previous years, come to the Liberals’ ‘rescue’.

Conyngham died at Bifrons in October 1861, aged 92. Her estate was valued at around £200,000, most of which was left to her eldest surviving son, Francis, 2nd Marquess Conyngham. Although it is unclear how far the ‘Bifrons purse’ remained open to Canterbury’s Liberals after her death, the Conyngham family maintained a political connection with the city. Francis’s son-in-law, Sir Theodore Brinckman, was a Liberal MP for the borough, 1868-74.

NLJ

Further reading

K. D. Reynolds, ‘Conyngham [née Denison], Elizabeth, Marchioness Conyngham’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

O. Sitwell, Left Hand Right Hand (1946)

L. Strachey and R. Fulford (ed.), The Greville memoirs, 1814–1860 (1938)

H. Granville, A Second Self: the letters of Harriet Granville, 1810-1845 (1990)

L. Melville, Regency ladies (1926)

P. Quenell (ed.), The private letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich (1937)

J. W. Croker, The Croker Papers (1884)

F. Bamford, The journal of Mrs Arbuthnot 1820-1832 (1950)

W. D. Rubenstein, ‘Denison, William Joseph’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, database entry on William Joseph Denison