Edward Conway, 1st Viscount Conway

The Right Honourable The Viscount Conway PC
Lord President of the Council
In office 1628–1631
Monarch	Charles I
Preceded by	The Earl of Marlborough
Personal details
Born	Edward Conway 1564 (1564)
Died	3 January 1631(1631-01-03) (aged 66–67) St Martin's Lane, London, England
Resting place	Arrow, Warwickshire, England
Nationality	English

Edward Conway, 1st Viscount Conway PC (1564 – 3 January 1631) was an English soldier and statesman. Notable among his descendants are Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Obama. He was the son and heir of Sir John Conway of Arrow, and his wife Ellen or Eleanor, daughter of Sir Fulke Greville of Beauchamp's Court, Warwickshire.

He commanded a foot regiment at the sack of Cadiz in 1596, where he was knighted. He then served as governor of Brill, an English Cautionary Town near Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his daughter Brilliana (who married Robert Harley) was born. In the first parliament held in the reign of James I, he sat as member for Penryn. When Brill was handed back to the States of Holland in 1616, he was given a pension.

He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1622 and made a Secretary of State in January 1623 for five years. In the parliament which convened on 19 February 1624 he was returned for Evesham. He was created Baron Conway, of Ragley, in 1624 or 1625 and Viscount Conway in 1627, and received the Irish peerage title of Viscount Killultagh. No doubt as a result of his time in the Netherlands, he was a supporter of a 'Protestant' foreign policy; he was sent as ambassador to Prague. In 1628, he was appointed Lord President of the Council, a post he held until his death on 3 January 1631. By his wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy of Tedington, Gloucestershire, and widow of Edmund Bray, he had three sons and four daughters. He was succeeded by his son Edward.

References

• Kelsey, Sean (May 2008). "Conway, Edward, first Viscount Conway and first Viscount Killultagh (c.1564–1631)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6120. Retrieved 28 June 2009. (subscription or UK public library membership required)

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Conway, Edward". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.