Historiography
After Conroy's departure from Victoria's service in 1837, a popular song read:
Conroy goes not to Court, the reason's plain
King John has played his part and ceased to reign.
Following his death in 1854, The Times published a positive obituary that declared "the name, person and character of Sir John Conroy are so well and, in many respects, so favourably known in English society that we have no doubt the announcement of his death will be received with feelings of general regret". The article briefly summarised his lifetime and praised Conroy for "considerable shrewdness, no small knowledge of human nature and a very winning address" as well as "devoting himself with great zeal and assiduity" to members of the Royal Family.
Described in his own lifetime as a "ridiculous fellow", Conroy has not been the recipient of much recent positive historical opinion. Twentieth-century historian Christopher Hibbert writes that Conroy was a "good-looking man of insinuating charm, tall, imposing, vain, clever, unscrupulous, plausible and of limitless ambition." For her part, twenty-first century historian Gillian Gill describes Conroy as "a career adventurer, expert manipulator and domestic martinet" who came to England with "small means, some ability and mighty ambition." In 2004, Elizabeth Longford wrote that Conroy "was not the arch-villain Victoria painted, but the victim of his own inordinate ambition."
Read more about this topic: John Conroy