Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/30

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Conny
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Conolly

Worthington of Kent House, Southsea, by whom he had two sons and some daughters. His daughter Emily Henrietta married Dr. Wilberforce, bishop of Newcastle. Connor published a volume entitled 'Ordination and Hospital Sermons.'

[Times, 2 May 1883, p. 10; Cat. Grad. Univ. Dublin.]

J. M. R.


CONNY, ROBERT (1646?–1713), physician, son of John Conny, surgeon, and twice mayor of Rochester, was born in or about 1645. He was a member of Magdalen College, Oxford, and proceeded B.A. on 8 June 1676, M.A. 3 May 1679, M.B. 2 May 1682, and M.D. 9 July 1685, on which occasion he 'denied and protested,' because the vice-chancellor caused one Bullard, of New College, to be presented LL.B. before him. In 1692 he was employed by the admiralty as physician to the sick and wounded landed at Deal. He married Frances, daughter of Richard Manley. He contributed a paper, in the form of a letter to Dr. Plot, 'On a Shower of Fishes,' to the 'Philosophical Transactions,' xx., and is said to have been a successful physician, and to have improved the practice of lithotomy. He died on 25 May 1713, at the age of sixty-eight, and was buried in Rochester Cathedral. His portrait is in the Bodleian picture gallery and in the lodgings of the president of Magdalen College.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 497-8; Wood's life, xcv; Wood's Fasti Oxen. (Bliss), ii. 397; Hist, and Antiq. of Oxford (Gutch), ii. ii. 964.]


CONOLLY, ARTHUR (1807–1842?), captain in the East India Company's service, was one of the six sons of Valentine Conolly of 37 Portland Place, London, who made a rapid fortune in India at the close of the last century, and who died on 2 Dec. 1819, three days after his wife (Gent. Mag. lxxxix. (ii.) 569, 570). Arthur, the third son, was born on 2 July 1807, and on 1 July 1820 was entered at Rugby School by his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Wake of Angley House, Cranbrook, Kent. Among his schoolfellows were Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, Bishop Claughton, and Generals Horatio Shirley and Sir Charles Trollope (Rugby School Registers, 1881). A shy, sensitive boy, Conolly was unfit for public-school life, and often referred in after years to his sufferings at Rugby (Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers, vol. ii.) Leaving Rugby, he entered Addiscombe Seminary 3 May 1822, but resigned on receiving a cavalry cadetship. He proceeded to Bengal the same year, a fellow-passenger with Bishop Heber, and in January 1823 was made cornet in the 6th Bengal native light cavalry, to which his brother, Edward Barry Conolly, was appointed later. Arthur became lieutenant in the regiment 13 May 1826, and captain 30 July 1838. Being in England on sick leave in 1829, he obtained leave to return to India through Central Asia. He left London 10 Aug. 1829, travelled through France and Germany to Hamburg, thence by sea to St. Petersburg, where he stayed a month, and then proceeded by Tiflis and Teheran to Astrabad. There he assumed the guise of a native merchant and laid in a stock of furs and shawls, in the hope of penetrating to Khiva. He left Astrabad for the Turcoman steppes on 20 April 1830, but when the little caravan to which he attached himself was about halfway between Krasnovodsk and Kizil Arvat he was seized by some treacherous nomads and plundered. For days his life hung in a balance, the Turcomans being undecided whether to kill him or sell him into slavery. Tribal jealousies in the end secured his release, and ne returned to Astrabad 22 May 1830, whence he continued his journey to India by way of Meshed, Herat, and Candahar, visiting Scinde, and finally crossing the Indian frontier in January 1831. A lively narrative of the journey—reflecting Conolly's bright, hopeful temperament—was published by him under the title 'A Journey to Northern India,' &c. 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1834. Conolly also contributed papers on 'The Overland Journey to India' to 'Gleanings in Science,' 1831, i. 346-57, 389-98, and on a 'Journey to Northern India' to 'J. R. Geog. Soc.,' iv. 278-317. After an interview with Lord William Bentinck at Delhi, Conolly rejoined his regiment, and when stationed at Cawnpore appears to have acquired the lasting friendship of the eccentric Jewish convert, Dr. Joseph Wolff, then travelling as a missionary in India. In 1834 he was appointed assistant to the government agent in Kajpootana, and in 1838 returned home on furlough. Seriously disappointed in love, Conolly sought relief in further professional activity (ib.) Russian movements in Central Asia were beginning to cause anxiety in England, and Conolly proposed to the home government to remove the not unreasonable pretext for Russian advances in that quarter by negotiating with the principal Usbeg chiefs, so as to put a stop to the carrying off of Russian and Persian subjects into slavery. He was furnished with letters of recommendation to Lord Auckland, then governor-general of India, together with 500l. to pay the expenses of an overland Journey. Conolly left London 11 Feb. 1839, visited Vienna