‘Mr Conolly loves business and has a good turn for it.’ This was how Joseph Addison described him to Lord Treasurer Godolphin, upon his arrival in Dublin as chief secretary, in May 1709. Addison was referring to Conolly’s command of parliamentary business and routine, which, together with the cultivation and management of a substantial electoral interest, made Conolly a force to be reckoned with. The Chief Secretary also noted that Conolly was very ‘popular within his own party and particularly among the dissenters’. These attributes recommended him to the new Whig lord lieutenant, Wharton. Conolly’s commitment to the Whig party was inevitable within the charged political atmosphere of Queen Anne’s reign, a period historians have termed ‘the first age of party’. It was also, and this is crucial towards understanding Conolly’s career, a period which saw parliament for the first time become a regular part of Irish political life. As S. J. Connolly has noted, borrowing from Conrad Russell, parliament moved from being an event to becoming an institution during this period. This shifting of the focal point in Irish politics away from the viceregal court at Dublin Castle towards parliament created opportunities for advancement and indeed for talent, that would have been more elusive for earlier generations. The successful careers enjoyed by Conolly, Alan Brodrick, and Marmaduke Coghill, to name but a few, would have been more difficult to achieve were it not for the possibilities opened up by regular parliaments.

The Williamite revolution had not only secured their estates through the land settlement; it offered the possibility of political dominance through the constitutional settlement that followed. Conolly was a member of the Irish house of commons for almost forty years from 1692 until his death in 1729. Despite his long parliamentary career, which outlasted most of his contemporaries, historians have tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the period after 1715, when he first took the speaker’s chair, and was reappointed to the privy council. However, the reasons for his rise to parliamentary prominence have not been subject to thorough scrutiny. His return as a privy councilor and indeed as a revenue commissioner – he had previously served in these roles in 1710–11 – was seen as a reward for adherence to the Whig cause in Queen Anne’s reign.