Thomas Coningsby, 1st Earl Coningsby - Family

Family

Coningsby married Barbara Gorges, daughter of Ferdinando Gorges, of Eye Herefordshire, who had been a merchant in Barbados. The marriage license was applied for to the vicar-general of the Archbishop of Canterbury on 18 February 1674/5, when Coningsby was described as aged about nineteen, and Barbara Gorges was stated to be about eighteen years old. Gorges was considered to be a financial schemer who contrived to marry his eldest daughter to Coningsby in order to secure for himself some of the Coningsby estates. Gorges' financial scheming caused ruinous loss to his son-in-law, from which he never recovered and he eventually divorced Barbara Gorges by whom he had four daughters and three sons. His grandson by this marriage succeeded to the Irish barony, but died without issue on 18 December 1729. His second wife, whom he married in April 1698, was Lady Frances Jones, daughter of Richard Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh, by whom he had one son, Richard, who died at Hampton on 2 April 1708 when two years old, choked by a cherrystone; and two daughters, Margaret and Frances. The second countess was buried at Hope-under-Dinmore on 23 February 1715, aged 42.

The grant of his earldom contained a remainder for the eldest daughter of his second marriage. Her issue male, John, the only child of this daughter, Margaret Newton, 2nd Countess Coningsby, by her husband Sir Michael Newton, died an infant, the victim of an accidental fall, said to have been caused through the fright of its nurse at seeing an ape, and on the mother's death in 1761 the title became extinct. The younger daughter of Lord Coningsby married Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a well-known satirical poet, and was buried in the chapel of St. Erasmus, Westminster Abbey, in December 1781.