however, extinguished his own political importance. The passing of the union decided him to abandon politics, for, though he might easily have been returned for Londonderry to the united parliament, he preferred to hand over the seat to Colonel Charles Stewart, Castlereagh's brother, and retired altogether to Castletown, where he died on 27 April 1803. His widow. Lady Louisa Conolly, survived him for some years. Her sister Sarah married Colonel George Napier, and Lady Louisa helped to educate the young Napiers, her nephews, who resided near Castletown with tneir mother and father. A character of her by Mrs. Richard Napier is published in Bruce's 'Life of Sir William Napier,' ii. 493-6. Sir Jonah Barrington, in his 'Historic Anecdotes of the Union,' devotes some pages (ed. 1809, pp. 266-7) to Conolly, in which he criticises his attitude to the union rather unfavourably, and thus analvses the causes of his influence: 'Mr. Conolly had the largest connection of any individual in the commons house. He fancied he was a whig because he was not professedly a tory; bad as a statesman, worse as an orator, he was as a sportsman pre-eminent... . He was nearly allied to the Irish minister at the time of the discussion of the union, and he followed his lordship's fortune, surrendered his country, lost his own importance, died in comparative obscurity, and in his person ended the pedigree of one of the most respectable English families ever resident in Ireland.'
[Gent. Mag. June 1803; Burke's Commoners; Cornwallis Correspondence; Barrington's Historic Anecdotes of the Union; Bruce's Life of Sir William Napier; Sir W. Napier's Life of Sir Charles James Napier.]
CONOLLY, WILLIAM (d. 1729), speaker of the Irish House of Commons, was the son of a publican, or, as some say, of a blacksmith. Having been called to the bar, he soon made way in his profession; but he distinguished himself more particularly in the Irish House of Commons, of which he was chosen speaker 12 Nov. 1715. He continued to hold this post until his resignation through failure of health, 12 Oct. 1729, only a few days before he died. He was likewise a member of the privy council; was ten times appointed to the exalted office of a lord justice of Ireland between 1710 and 1729, during the absence of successive viceroys; and was chief commissioner of the Irish revenues. Swift says that Wharton, when lord-lieutenant, sold this place to Conolly for 3,000l. He married Catherine, daughter of Sir Albert Conyngham, knt., lieutenant-general of the ordnance in Ireland, and sister of Henry, first earl Conyngham; and dying without issue 30 Oct. 1729, he was buried in Celbridge church, co. Kildare, being succeeded in his large estates by his nephew, the Right Hon. William Conolly, M.P., of Stratton Hall, Staffordshire. Archbishop Boulter, in a letter from Dublin of the above date, thus refers to Conolly's death, and to the consequent official changes: 'After his death being expected for several days, Mr. Conolly died this morning about one o'clock. He has left behind him a very great fortune, some talk of 17,000l. per ann. As his death makes a vacancy among the commissioners of the revenue, my lord chancellor and I have been talking with my lord-lieutenant on that subject, and we all agree it will be for his majesty's service that a native succeed him; and as Sir Ralph Gore, the new speaker, does not care to quit the post of chancellor of the exchequer, which he is already possessed of, and which by an addition made to the place by his late majesty is worth better than 800l. per ann., and is for life, to be made one of the commissioners, we join in our opinion that the most proper person here to succeed Mr. Conolly is Dr. Coghill, who is already a person of weight, and has done service in the parliament. It is worthy of note that the plan which still prevails in Ireland of wearing linen scarfs at funerals, established with the view of encouraging the linen manufacture, was observed for the first time at Conolly's funeral.
[Noble's continuation of Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, iii. 188; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland (Archdall), vii. 184; Archbishop Boulter's Letters, i. 334; Warburton, Whitelaw, and Walsh's Hist. of Dublin, i. 37; Gilbert's Hist. of Dublin, iii. 370; Swift's Works (Scott), ii. 27, 179, 467, iv. 28. xviii. 251.]
CONQUEST, JOHN TRICKER, M.D. (1789–1806), man-midwife, was born in 1789. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1813, and became a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London in December 1819. In 1820 he published 'Outlines of Midwifery,' of which a second edition appeared in 1821. He used to give four courses of lectures on midwifery in each year at his own house, 4 Aldemanbury Postern, London, and charged three guineas to each student attending. The lectures included remarks on the diseases of children and on forensic medicine. In a few years he moved into Finsbury Square, became lecturer on midwifery in the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital (1825), and attained considerable practice. In 1830 he published an address to the Hunterian Society on puerperal inflammation (16 pp. 8vo), and in 1848 'Letters to a Mother on
