Sir John Ponsonby Conroy, 1st Baronet (21 October 1786-2 March 1854) was a British Army officer who served as comptroller to Victoria, Duchess of Kent and her young daughter, Princess Victoria.
Biography[]
John Conroy was born in Caerhun, Caernarvonshire, Wales in 1786, the son of an Irish lawyer and his wife. He was commissioned into the British Army's Royal Artillery in 1803 and served in the Napoleonic Wars, although he was known to avoid battle and did not participate in the Peninsular War or the Battle of Waterloo. Through his wife's uncle, he was appointed an equerry to Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn in 1817, and he became comptroller to his widow Victoria, Duchess of Kent after 1820. Conroy became very close to the Duchess and created the strict "Kensington System" to raise the young Princess Victoria in a restrictive environment within Kensington Palace. Conroy failed to pressure the princess into agreeing to make her mother regent over her should she inherit the throne from her uncle King William IV; Conroy had hoped to dominate the Duchess and become the power behind the throne. Conroy bullied and insulted Victoria because of his self-perceived connection to the Irish aristocracy, and Victoria depended on her governess Louise Lehzen to defend her from Conroy's machinations. In 1837, Victoria ascended the throne and immediately expelled Conroy from her household, although he remained in the Duchess of Kent's service until 1839, when the duke of Wellington persuaded Conroy to go into exile on the European continent. Conroy returned to his home near Reading, Berkshire in 1842, and he subsisted on his Welsh lead mines' revenues until his death in 1854.