Sir John Conroy, 1st Baronet KH (21 October 1786 – 2 March 1854) was a British army officer who became the chief attendant of the Duke of Kent and the Duchess of Kent who were the parents of Queen Victoria. When the Duke died, he became comptroller of the duchess' household and was rumoured to be her lover. Together, they designed the Kensington System, an elaborate and strict system of rules for the upbringing of young Victoria, designed to render her weak-willed and utterly dependent upon them in the hopes of allowing them to wield power through her. Victoria grew to hate Conroy over the oppressive system and immediately expelled him from court life when she became queen.
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Conroy was born in Wales to Irish parents, John Ponsonby Conroy, Esq., and Margaret Wilson. His father, a barrister, had moved to Britain to practice law. He was privately educated until enrolled in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. On 8 September 1803, he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery as a Second Lieutenant,[1] and was promoted to First Lieutenant on 12 September.[2] He was further promoted to Second Captain on 13 March 1811[3] and appointed adjutant in the Corps of Artillery Drivers on 11 March 1817.[4] He retired on half-pay in 1822.[5]
Through the connection with his father-in-law, Major-General Benjamin Fisher, Conroy came to the attention of the Duke of Kent. He was appointed as an equerry in 1817, shortly before the Duke's marriage. An efficient organiser, he soon became a favourite of both the Duke and Duchess. When the Duke died in 1820, Conroy offered his services as comptroller to the Duchess of Kent and her infant daughter, the future Queen.
Conroy's relationship to the Duchess was very close and they were widely believed to be lovers. He served as her comptroller and private secretary for the next 19 years. The pair devised the Kensington System to govern young Victoria's upbringing, an elaborate and oppressive system of rules regulating every facet of Victoria's life and keeping her in reclusive isolation most of the time, with the goal of making her weak, compliant, and utterly dependent upon her mother and Conroy.
By 1830, it had become clear that Victoria would succeed to the throne. If King William IV died while Victoria was a minor, which seemed likely, the Duchess believed that she would be Regent. Conroy and the Duchess began browbeating and threatening Victoria, repeatedly telling her to appoint Conroy her private secretary and treasurer. Victoria resisted their efforts and grew to hate her mother and Conroy.[6]
King William intensely disliked the Duchess and reportedly vowed to wait until Victoria came of age to die simply to keep the Duchess from a regency. He died just weeks after Victoria's 18th birthday in 1837, making Victoria queen. One of her first acts was to dismiss Conroy from her own household and ban him from her apartments. She could not dismiss him from her mother's household. On the advice of the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, Victoria granted Conroy a baronetcy[7] and a pension of £3000 per annum, with the understanding that he would not be visible at court in return. This did not satisfy Conroy, who felt that he deserved at least an earldom.
Though Queen Victoria, as an unmarried young woman, was still expected to live with her mother, she relegated the Duchess and Conroy to remote apartments at Buckingham Palace, cutting off personal contact with them. Lord Melbourne advised Victoria to marry to be completely rid of them. When she did marry her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on February 10, 1840, Conroy left the Duchess's household and went to the Continent as it became clear that he would never gain any influence in the royal court. The Duchess remained in Britain, but was evicted from the palace and rarely visited by Victoria.
Conroy also had some control of the finances of The Princess Sophia (1777–1848), a spinster daughter of George III. Sophia had a substantial income from the civil list. Because of poor health and failing eyesight, however, she lived very modestly, but at her death, she left only £1,607 19s 7d in her bank accounts.
In 1848, the Duke of Cambridge and the Duchess of Gloucester had a lawyer write to Conroy demanding that he account for the rest of their sister Sophia's funds, but Conroy simply ignored it. According to Flora Fraser, the most recent biographer of George III's daughters, Princess Sophia had in fact personally spent huge sums on Conroy, including heavy contributions to the purchase prices of his residences and supporting his family in a style he judged appropriate to their position.
Soon after this, the Duchess of Kent's new comptroller, Sir George Couper, had need to go through the old accounts. He found huge discrepancies. No records for her household or personal expenses had been kept after 1829. There was also no record of nearly £50,000 the Duchess had received from her brother, Leopold, nor of an additional £10,000 from William IV. Lady Longford's biography of Queen Victoria states that Conroy claimed the missing money had been used to pay off the substantial debts left by Victoria's father the Duke of Kent, but this was a transparent untruth since the Queen herself had been paying them off ever since her accession in 1837. No satisfactory explanation for the situation was ever offered.
As with the estate of The Princess Sophia, however, there was no concrete evidence that Conroy had taken any of the missing funds, and he was never charged.
Conroy's relationship with the Duchess was the subject of much speculation in his lifetime. When the Duke of Wellington was asked if the Duchess and Conroy were lovers, he replied that he "supposed so".
Victoria was reported to have caught Conroy and her mother "engaged in familiarities". It was not recorded whether the familiarities were of a physical sexual nature, but she interpreted them as indicating that they were lovers rather than mistress and servant. Victoria told her governess, Baroness Lehzen, who in turn told Madame de Spaeth, one of the Duchess's ladies-in-waiting. De Spaeth confronted the Duchess about the relationship and was immediately dismissed by the Duchess. Lehzen became an enemy of the Duchess and Conroy.
Later, as an aged Queen, Victoria was aghast to discover that many people did indeed believe that the Duchess and Conroy were intimate, and stated that "Mama's piety would have prevented this."
During Victoria's lifetime, there were rumours that Conroy, and not the Duke of Kent, was her biological father.[8] But the Duchess and Conroy had not met at the time of Victoria's conception and Victoria bore no physical similarities to Conroy, but did bear strong family resemblance to House of Hanover, in particular the Duke of Kent's eldest brother King George IV.
A. N. Wilson suggested that Victoria was not actually descended from George III (the Duke of Kent's father), because several of her descendants had haemophilia, which was unknown among her recognised ancestors.[9]
However, there is evidence that some of Victoria's descendants did have mild porphyria, most notably Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen. There is more reliable documentation that one of her great-great-grandsons, Prince William of Gloucester, was diagnosed with the disease shortly before his death when his aircraft crashed during an air race.[10]
Haemophilia is carried in the female line, except in the rare case where a male sufferer lives long enough to beget daughters, all of whom would then be carriers. Conroy showed no signs of haemophilia, and lived to be 68 years old.
Conroy married Elizabeth Fisher (1791 – 9 April 1861), daughter of Major-General Benjamin Fisher, in Dublin, on 12 December 1808. They had five children:
Conroy was portrayed in the 2009 film The Young Victoria by English actor Mark Strong.[11] The film depicts Conroy as a maniacal controlling pseudo-father to the young Victoria during the year preceding her ascension even going so far as depicting him assaulting the princess twice. The film goes on to depict Conroy's expulsion from Queen Victoria's household. Patrick Malahide played Conroy in the 2001 TV miniseries Victoria & Albert.
| Baronetage of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| New creation | Baronet (of Llanbrynmair) 1837–1854 |
Succeeded by Edward Conroy |