[citation needed] Conyngham was returned to Parliament for Westbury in 1818, a seat he held until 1820,[1] and later represented Donegal (succeeding his deceased elder brother the Earl of Mount Charles) between 1825 and 1831.

[14] Burton-Conyngham was an absentee landlord in control of some territories in Ireland; particularly in County Donegal (covering Glenties, Arranmore and most of the barony of Boylagh) in Ulster.

They had been surviving on a diet of potatoes and water, due to the constantly raising rent levels and those in Arranmore lived on seaweed part of the year.

[15] Including all of County Donegal, not just territories controlled by Burton-Conyngham, around 13,000 Irish people died as a consequence of the Hunger from 1845 to 1850 and many more emigrated.

[16] Burton-Conyngham sold Arranmore in 1847 to the land speculator Walter Chorley of Belfast for £200, who proved more interested in the estate but also far more ruthless (who decided to evict all the sub-tenants, many of whom fled to Donegal Town, while other Islanders were shipped off to the Great Lakes of North America).

[1] As Lord Chamberlain, it fell to him on the death of William IV to go with the Archbishop of Canterbury to Kensington Palace at 5 a.m. on 20 June 1837 to inform Princess Victoria that she was now Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

Lord Conyngham only survived her by five months and died in London in July 1876, aged 79, after an operation for lithotomy.