GREAT BRITAIN

PRE-STAMP FREE POSTAL FRONT COVER

** SIGNED BY **

GENERAL FRANCIS CONYNGHAM

2nd MARQUESS CONYNGHAM

ANGLO-IRISH SOLDIER & POLITICIAN

Postmark: None

Date: 28th September 1829

Size:  4.5" x 3.25"

Sent from Windsor to Birmingham 

A pre-stamp 'Free' postal front signed in the bottom left corner by General Francis Nathaniel Conyngham, 2nd Marquess Conyngham, KP, GCH, PC (1797-1876), who was an Anglo-Irish soldier, courtier, politician and absentee landlord. Born in Dublin, Conyngham was the second son of General The 1st Marquess Conyngham and Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Denison, and the brother of Henry, Earl of Mount Charles, and The 1st Baron Londesborough. He was educated at Eton. He became known as Lord Francis Conyngham in 1816 when his father was created Marquess Conyngham and gained the courtesy title of Earl of Mount Charles in 1824 on the early death of his unmarried elder brother.

In his youth, Lord Conyngham was a Page of Honour to the Prince Regent (later George IV). Between 1820 and 1830 he was a Groom of the Bedchamber and Master of the Robes to George IV. As Lord Chamberlain, it fell to him on the death of William IV to go with the Archbishop of Canterbury to Kensington Palace at 5 a.m. on 20 June 1837 to inform Princess Victoria that she was now Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. He was the first to address her as "Your Majesty".

Conyngham was returned to Parliament for Westbury in 1818, a seat he held until 1820, and later represented Donegal (succeeding his deceased elder brother the Earl of Mount Charles) between 1825 and 1831. He served under the Earl of Liverpool as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs between 1823 and 1826 and under Liverpool, George Canning, Lord Goderich and the Duke of Wellington as a Lord of the Treasury between 1826 and 1830. In 1832 he succeeded his father in the marquessate and entered the House of Lords.

In July 1834 Lord Conyngham joined the Whig government of Lord Melbourne as Postmaster General, a post he retained until the government fell in December of the same year, and briefly held the same post under Melbourne again between April and May 1835. The latter month he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Lord Chamberlain of the Household. He remained in this position until 1839, when he was succeeded by his brother-in-law the Earl of Uxbridge.

Lord Conyngham was also Vice-Admiral of Ulster between 1849 and 1876 and Lord-Lieutenant of County Meath between 1869 and 1876. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Hanoverian Order in 1830 and a Knight of the Order of St Patrick in 1833.

On 21 September 1820, Conyngham purchased a cornetcy in the 22nd Light Dragoons, but this appointment did not take place, and he was replaced by his brother Lord Albert Conyngham, after he was appointed, without purchase, to be cornet and sub-lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards on 23 April 1821. He purchased a lieutenancy in the 9th Light Dragoons on 24 October 1821, and on 13 December, he exchanged from the half-pay of the 9th Light Dragoons into the 1st Regiment of Life Guards. He exchanged again, into the 17th Light Dragoons, on 3 April 1823, and purchased an unattached captaincy on 12 June 1823. Mount Charles, as he then was, entered the Ceylon Regiment, and purchased an unattached majority on 2 October 1827. He became a Major-General in 1858, a Lieutenant-General in 1866 and a full General in 1874.

Conyngham was an absentee landlord in control of some territories in Ireland; particularly in County Donegal (covering Glenties, Arranmore and most of the barony of Boylagh) in Ulster. He showed little interest in these estates he claimed there. According to Thomas Campbell Foster in an 1845 report for The Times of London newspaper, entitled "Commissioner to report on the condition of the people of Ireland", he had visited the area once in his life for a few days. Conyngham instead hired John Benbow, an English MP, as his chief managing agent, who visited once a year and sub-agents collected rent from tenants each half a year. Foster's report described these estates as such "from one end of his large estate here to the other, nothing is to be found but poverty, misery, wretched cultivation, and infinite subdivision of land."

As the poverty was particularly severe on Conyngham's estates, the Great Hunger of 1845–52 was miserable for his tenants. They had been surviving on a diet of potatoes and water, due to the constantly raising rent levels and those in Arranmore lived on seaweed part of the year. Including all of County Donegal, not just territories controlled by Conyngham, around 13,000 Irish people died as a consequence of the Hunger from 1845 to 1850 and many more emigrated. Conyngham sold Arranmore in 1847.

Prior to the introduction of postage stamps in 1840, Members of Parliament and the House of Lords were allowed the use of a free postal service in which to conduct their Parliamentary business. A 'Free Front' is the address piece only which has been cut from a postal entire cover, and which was usually signed by the politician or peer of the realm. Although not stamped a 'Free' this front has been signed.

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