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A QUEEN ANNE SILVER-GILT TAZZA MARK OF DAVID WILLAUME, LONDON, 1704 Circular on fluted cast foot, applied underneath with cut-card work, the dish with gadrooned border and engraved with a coat-of-arms below a baron's coronet, marked under dish and on footrim 9 5/8 in. (24.5 cm.) diam. 30 oz. 7 dwt. (945 gr.) The arms are those of Coningsby impaling Jones for Thomas Coningsby, 1st Baron Coningsby (1656-1729), later 1st Earl Coningsby and his second wife, Frances, daughter and co-heir of Richard, Earl of Ranelagh, whom he married in 1698.
Thomas, 1st Earl of Coningsby (c.1656-1729), the eldest son of Humphrey Coningsby and his wife, Letice, daughter of Arthur Loftus, of Rathfarnham, was a member of parliament and a prominent figure at court in the reigns of King William III and King George I. An ardent supporter of the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688, he opposed the Jacobite faction throughout his career and was favoured at Court. He went with King William III to Ireland where he distinguished himself at the Battle of the Boyne. He was later appointed Joint-Receiver and Paymaster General of the army in Ireland. While his political opponents accused him of using his position for his own financial benefit he remained in the King's favour and was created Baron Coningsby of Clanbrassil, in the Irish Peerage, in 1692, as shown by the baron's coronet above the engraved arms on the tazza. He met with less favour in the reign of Queen Anne, but with the accession of King George I he resumed a central role in public life. Among other appointments he was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the Treaty of Utrecht and was made Lord Lieutenant of both Herefordshire and Radnorshire in 1714. In 1716 he was created a Baron in the English peerage, and he was elevated to an earldom in 1719.
Alongside his political career, Coningsby also took a deep interest in the family seat, Hampton Court, in Herefordshire, which had been purchased by his ancestor, Sir Humphrey Coningsby, in circa 1510. He transformed both the house and garden, consulting among others the architect William Talman. The work is recorded in of views of the house Knyff, now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (see J. Harris, The Artist and the Country House, London, 1979, pp. 118-9, nos 115). He married twice; first, Barbara, daughter of his guardian Ferdinando Gorges, in 1674, and second, in 1698, Lady Frances Jones (1662-1714), whose arms are engraved on the present lot. A full-length portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, dated 1722, shows the Earl of Coningsby with his daughters, illustrated here.