1901–1904 he was Slade professor of the fine arts at Cambridge. He was knighted in 1895. Sir Martin Conway early became a member of the Alpine Club, of which he was president from 1902 to 1904. In 1892 he beat the climbing record by ascending to a height of 23,000 ft. in the Himalayas in the course of an exploring and mountaineering expedition undertaken under the auspices of the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association. In 1896–1897 he explored the interior of Spitsbergen, and in the next year he explored and surveyed the Bolivian Andes, climbing Sorata (21,500 ft.) and Illimani (21,200 ft.). He also ascended Aconcagua (23,080 ft.) and explored Tierra del Fuego. At the Paris exhibition of 1900 he received the gold medal for mountain surveys, and the founder’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1905. His expeditions are described in his Climbing and Exploration in the Kara-Koram Himalayas (1894), The Alps from End to End (1895), The First Crossing of Spitsbergen (1897), The Bolivian Andes (1901), &c.; No Man’s Land, a History of Spitsbergen from . . . 1596 . . . was published in 1906.
CONWAY (Conwy, or Aberconwy), a municipal borough in the Arfon parliamentary division of Carnarvonshire, N. Wales, 14 m.
by the London & North-Western railway from Bangor, and 225
m. N.W. from London. Pop. (1901) 4681. The town is enclosed
by a high wall, roughly triangular, about 1 m. round, with
twenty-one dilapidated round towers, pierced by three principal
gateways with two strong towers. The castle in the south-east
angle, built in 1284 by Edward I., was inhabited, in 1389, by
Richard II., who here agreed to abdicate. Held for Charles I. by
Archbishop Williams, it was taken by General Mytton in 1646.
Dismantled by the new proprietor, Earl Conway, it remains a
ruin. It is oblong, with eight massive towers, and has, within, a
hall 130 ft. in length, known as Llewelyn’s. The parliamentary
borough of Conway, returning, with five other towns, one member,
extends over to the right bank of the stream Conwy (Conway).
In 1885 the mayor of Conway was made a constable. Llandudno
with Great and Little Orme’s Heads are at some 4 m. distance.
Two bridges, a tubular for the railway (40 ft. shorter than that of
the Menai) and a suspension, designed by Stephenson (1846–1848)
and Telford (1822–1826) respectively, cross the stream.
St Mary’s church is Gothic; the Elizabethan Plâs Mawr is the
locale of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art. There are still
some fragments of the 1185 Cistercian Abbey. There are golf
links here and at Llandudno. The Conwy stream, on which a
steamboat runs from Deganwy (2 m. below Conway town) to
Trefriw, opposite Llanrwst, in summer, has some coasting trade
in sulphur and slates. It is about 30 m. long, its valley (a
haunt of artists) containing the towns last mentioned and
Bettws y coed. Its pearls are mentioned in Drayton’s Polyolbion
and Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Pearl fisheries existed at Conway
for many centuries, dating back to the Roman occupation.
Tacitus, Agricola, 12, says of Britain “gignit et Oceanus
margarita, sed subfusca ac liventia,” as are those found to-day.
Diganhwy (Dyganwy, Deganwy) is mentioned in the Mabinogion
(Geraint and Enid), if the reading is sound; it is certainly
mentioned in the Annales Cambriae (years 812–822) and in the
Black Book of Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen), xxiii. 1. Caer-hyn, 412 m.
from Conway, is on the highroad from London to Holyhead,
and is the Conovium of the Romans. The site of the camp can
still be traced, consisting of a square, strengthened by four
parallel walls, extending to a distance from the main work.
The camp is on a height, with the Conwy in front and a wood on
each flank. At the foot of the hill, near the stream, was a Roman
bath, with walls, pavement and pillars. Camden’s Britannia
mentions tiles, with marks of the 10th or Antoninus’s legion,
as being found here, perhaps mistakenly. Gleini nadroedd
(possibly amulets) and vitrum have been found here. In Bwlch y
ddwy faen (“two rock ravine”), on the way to Aber, are the
remains of a Roman road and antiquities.
CONYBEARE, WILLIAM DANIEL (1787–1857), dean of Llandaff, one of the most distinguished of English geologists, who was born in London on the 7th of June 1787, was a grandson of John Conybeare, bishop of Bristol (1692–1755), a notable preacher and divine, and son of Dr William Conybeare, rector of Bishopsgate. Educated first at Westminster school, he went in 1805 to Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1808 he took his degree of B.A., with a first in classics and second in mathematics, and proceeded to M.A. three years later. Having entered holy orders he became in 1814 curate of Wardington, near Banbury, and he accepted also a lectureship at Brislington near Bristol. During
this period he was one of the founders of the Bristol Philosophical Institution (1822). He was rector of Sully in Glamorganshire from 1823 to 1836, and vicar of Axminster from 1836 to 1844. He was appointed Bampton lecturer in 1839, and was instituted to the deanery of Llandaff in 1845. Attracted to the study of geology by the lectures of Dr John Kidd (q.v.) he pursued the
subject with ardour. As soon as he had left college he made extended journeys in Britain and on the continent, and he
became one of the early members of the Geological Society.
Both Buckland and Sedgwick acknowledged their indebtedness
to him for instruction received when they first began to devote
attention to geology. To the Transactions of the Geological
Society as well as to the Annals of Philosophy and Philosophical
Magazine he contributed many geological memoirs. In 1821 he
distinguished himself by the description of a skeleton of the
Plesiosaurus, discovered by Mary Anning, and his account has
been confirmed in all main points by subsequent researches.
Among his most important memoirs is that on the south-western
coal district of England, written in conjunction with Dr Buckland,
and published in 1824. He wrote also on the valley of the Thames,
on Elie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain-chains, and on the
great landslip which occurred near Lyme Regis in 1839 when
he was vicar of Axminster. His principal work, however, is the
Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales (1822), being a second
edition of the small work issued by William Phillips (q.v.) and
written in co-operation with that author. The original contributions
of Conybeare formed the principal portion of this edition,
of which only Part I., dealing with the Carboniferous and newer
strata, was published. It affords evidence throughout of the
extensive and accurate knowledge possessed by Conybeare;
and it exercised a marked influence on the progress of geology
in this country. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and a
corresponding member of the Institute of France. In 1844 he
was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of
London. The loss of his eldest son, W. J. Conybeare, preyed on
his mind and hastened his end. He died at Itchenstoke, near
Portsmouth, a few months after his son, on the 12th of August
1857. (Obituary in Gent. Mag. Sept. 1857, p. 335.)
His elder brother John Josias Conybeare (1779–1824), also educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and an accomplished scholar, became vicar of Batheaston, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon and afterwards of poetry at Oxford. He likewise was an ardent student of geology and communicated several important papers to the Annals of Philosophy and the Transactions of the Geological Society of London. (Obituary in Ann. Phil. vol. viii., Sept. 1824, p. 162.)
CONYBEARE, WILLIAM JOHN (1815–1857), English divine,
son of Dean W. D. Conybeare, was born on the 1st of August
1815, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1837. From 1842
to 1848 he was principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution,
which he left for the vicarage of Axminster. He published
Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social, in 1856, and a novel, Perversion,
or the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity, but is best known as
the joint author (with J. S. Howson) of The Life and Epistles of St Paul (1851). He died at Weybridge in 1857.
COODE, SIR JOHN (1816–1892), English engineer, was born at Bodmin, Cornwall, on the 11th of November 1816, the son of a solicitor. After considerable experience as an engineer in the west of England he came to London, and from 1844–1847 had a consulting practice in Westminster. In the latter year he was appointed resident engineer in charge of the extensive
national harbour works at Portland then in progress. In 1856 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of this undertaking, and this post he retained till the completion of the works in 1872. His
