Conway House.
Conway.
The first occupant of the fourth house on the site of the Freemasons’ buildings seems to have been Lord Conway. A deed, dated 20th December, 1641,[[382]] mentions Edward, Lord Viscount Conway, as then in occupation, and no doubt the house is identical with that referred to as Lord Conway’s residence in Queen Street in a letter dated 31st March, 1639.[[383]]
Edward, second Viscount Conway and Killultagh, was born in 1594, and succeeded to the title in February, 1631.[[384]] Shortly afterwards he was living in Drury Lane.[[385]]
His residence in Great Queen Street dates from 1638 or the commencement of 1639, but he did not purchase the house until 17th July, 1645.[[386]]
Conway died at Lyons in 1655[[387]], and was succeeded by his son Edward, the third Viscount and first Earl of Conway, born about 1623. He held several important military appointments, and was for two years, 1681–3, secretary of state for the north department. He was the author of a work entitled Opuscula Philosophica. He was married three times, his first wife being Anne, the daughter of Sir Henry Finch. Lady Conway was a most accomplished woman, her chief study being metaphysical science, which she carried on with the utmost assiduity in spite of tormenting headaches which never left her. In later life she adopted the tenets of the Society of Friends. She died on 23rd February, 1679, while her husband was absent in Ireland, but in order that he might be enabled to see her features again, Van Helmont, her physician, preserved the body in spirits of wine and placed it in a coffin with a glass over the face. The burial finally took place on 17th April, 1679. She was the author of numerous works, but only one, a philosophical treatise, was printed, and that in a Latin translation published at Amsterdam in 1690. Conway was created an Earl in 1679 and died in August, 1683, leaving his estates to his cousin, Popham Seymour, who assumed the name of Conway.
Up to 1670 the Earl seems to have resided frequently in Great Queen Street. The Hearth Tax Rolls for 1665 and 1666 show him as occupier, though the former contains a note: “Note, Lord Wharton to pay,”[[388]] and several references to his residence there occur in the correspondence of the time. Thus on 18th March, 1664–5, he writes to Sir Edward Harley, “Direct to me at my house in Queen Street”;[[389]] in June [?], 1665, he informs Sir John Finch: “I am settled in my house in Queen Street”;[[390]] a letter to him describes how on the occasion of the Great Fire in 1666, “your servant in Queen Street put some of your best chairs and fine goods into your rich coach and sent for my horses to draw them to Kensington, where they now are”;[[391]] on 19th October, 1667, his mother writes to him at “Great Queen Street, London”;[[392]] in February, 1667–8, he tells Sir J. Finch that he hopes “you will ere long be merry in my house in Queen Street, which you are to look upon as your own”;[[393]] and on 4th March, 1668–9, Robert Bransby asks for payment of his bill of £200 “for goods delivered at your house in Queen Street.”[[394]] On 25th September, 1669, we learn that a new (or perhaps rather an additional) resident is expected, Edward Wayte mentioning in a letter that “the room your lordship wished to have new floored is going to be occupied by Lord Orrery’s[[395]] daughter, who is coming with her mother to England.”[[396]] The visit evidently took place, for on 4th November, 1669, Conway’s importunate creditor, Bransby, writes, in connection with the non-payment of his account, “I beg the delivery of divers goods in the house in Queen Street, which are being used by some of Lord Orrery’s family, and also of some green serge chairs lent, which are in your study”;[[397]] and again on 15th March, 1669–70: “there are some goods belonging to me in the house in Queen Street, which are in Lord Orrery’s wearing.”[[398]] Later in the same year the house seems to have been given up, as Bransby on 27th September in the course of another pitiful complaint says: “I hear that you have disposed of your house in Queen Street and sent the furniture to Ragley.”
The Hearth Tax Roll for 1673 shows the house in occupation of “Slingsby, Esq.,” who was probably the immediate successor of Conway.
In the absence of more definite information Slingsby cannot be identified. It is just possible that he was Henry Slingsby, the Master of the Mint, and friend of Evelyn.