Thomas Coningsby

Sir Thomas Coningsby (9 October 1550[2]-30 May 1625) was an English soldier and Member of Parliament, notable for his diary of military action in France in 1591, and his feuds over local representation in Herefordshire.

He acted as muster-master to the English detachment, was in frequent intercourse with Henry of Navarre before Rouen, and was knighted by Essex on 8 October 1591.

[11] Following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Coningsby was appointed to a committee managing the jointure lands in England of Anne of Denmark, queen consort to James VI and I.

He wrote to Sidney from Hampton Court in "this spacious and fertile Manor of Leominster", noting that his new role in the county was a "a thing very displeasing" to Croft.

A portrait of his daughter Anne Coningsby, attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, has a later inscription mentioning that she was a maid of honour to the queen.

[18] For this aspect of his character, Coningsby is said to have been the very model of Sir Puntavarlo in Ben Jonson's, Every Man out of His Humour,[19] and in one performance an actor dressed in his clothes.

An unmarried cousin, Joyce Jeffreys, who was born at Ham Castle at Clifton-upon-Teme, joined the household at Hampton Court in 1617, to be a "perpetual companion" to Phillipa Coningsby.

Thomas Coningsby married Philippa, second daughter of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton, near Peterborough and his wife Agnes Sidney.