Charles Conybeare

For the Canadian lawyer, businessman and poet, see Charles F. P. Conybeare.

Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare (1 June 1853 – 18 February 1919) was an English barrister and a radical Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1895.

Conybeare was born at Kew, London, the son of John Conybeare, a barrister and his wife Katherine Vansittart.[1] He was educated at Tonbridge School and Christ Church, Oxford where he won the Lothian Prize with a study on The Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions. He was assistant master at Manchester Grammar School from 1877 to 1878 and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1881.[2]

In 1885 Conybeare was elected as a radical Liberal MP for Camborne.[3] He was imprisoned in 1889 under the Irish Coercion Act and supported Keir Hardie. Conybeare was interested in women's suffrage and was a member of the Mens League for Women's suffrage.[4] He lost his seat in 1895 and failed in his attempt to be elected at St Helens in 1900.

Charles Conybeare married Florence Annie Strauss, the daughter of a Bohemian glass merchant, on 15 October 1896, in the Theistic Church in Piccadilly, London. She was an active member of the Women's Suffragette Movement. The couple began their married life in a spacious apartment at 3 Carlyle Gardens, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London. Charles Conybeare owned or leased Tregullow House, a country pile in Tregullow, Scorrier, Cornwall, that had been passed down through the Williams family, a well-known local family that had made their fortune in the mining of tin and copper. Charles and Florence Conybeare were the co-beneficial owners of a property known as the Tregullow Offices, which Charles Conybeare bought in 1889 from the Williams family, and which he mortgaged in 1891 in order to raise some capital. The couple sold the property in 1902 to a Charles Rule Williams, a retired mining engineer who renamed it Zimapan Villa.[5]

Conybeare died at the age of 65

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Debretts Guide to the House of Commons 1886
  2. ↑ Tonbridge School Register p 139
  3. ↑ Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Charles Conybeare
  4. ↑ Elizabeth Crawford The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 UCL Press 1999 p121
  5. ↑ Smith, Peter King (2009-10). The Zimapanners. www.zimapanners.com is the history of a Cornish count house, and includes biographies of its owners, occupants and those who had a legal interest in it.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency Member of Parliament for Camborne
1885 – 1895 		Succeeded by
Arthur Strauss