Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/362

 and for a long time it remained a mystery.

On 9 Nov. 1687 Covel was instituted chancellor of York on the presentation of the king during the vacancy of the see. On the death of Dr. Cudworth, master of Christ's, in 1688, the fellows had reason to fear that James was about to send them a mandate to elect a certain member of their society named Smithson, rector of Toft; they therefore proceeded in some haste to an election, and on 7 July chose Covel as master, a choice they probably would not have made had they had more time (Cole MSS. xx). James, although his scheme was defeated, approved of the election, and Covel appears to have been a popular master. He was vice-chancellor when William III visited Cambridge on 4 Oct. 1689, and it is said that, when he expressed some doubt as to how the king would receive him, William sent him word that he could distinguish between Dr. Covel and the vice-chancellor of the university. The king accordingly received him courteously, but the old quarrel at the Hague is supposed to have stood in the way of his preferment (ib.) He was again vice-chancellor in 1708. The book for which he had collected materials during his stay in the East appeared in 1722 under the title ‘Some Account of the present Greek Church, with Reflections on their present Doctrine and Discipline, particularly on the Eucharist and the rest of their Seven Pretended Sacraments, compared with Jac. Goar's Notes on the Greek Ritual or Eὐχολόγιον,’ fol. Cambridge. It was little read, for men had ceased to care for the questions it handled. Covel in his preface says that the delay was caused first by his ‘itinerant’ life, and then by his engagements at Cambridge, where he describes himself as ‘chained to a perpetual college bursar's place.’ He died on 19 Dec. of the same year, and was buried in the chapel of Christ's, where there is an inscription to him. He left by will 3l. a year to the poor of Littlebury. Cole, the writer of the ‘Athenæ Cantabrigienses,’ lighted by chance, he says, on Covel's picture in his congregation robes, and presented it to Christ's. It was painted by a certain Valentine Ritz, a German who lived some seven years at Cambridge, and died there. Covel's journals and correspondence are in the British Museum Additional MSS. 22910–14; they consist of two large folios of autograph letters, some of considerable interest, from Newton, Locke, Wanley, and others—the Newton letters, however, are not autographs, the originals are at Trinity College, Cambridge. There is a correspondence with Wanley on the subject of the sale of Covel's manuscripts and books to the Earl of Oxford. The sale was finally made on 27 Feb. 1715–16, the price paid by the earl being 300l. Some of the books which were missing were to be delivered when they were found. Part, at least, of the collection of New Testament MSS. is now in the British Museum. Besides these, there are three volumes, chiefly of travels; the largest, containing an account of Covel's voyage in 1670, is divided into chapters, and written as if for publication; the smallest (22913) contains a journal of the tour in Italy. MS. 22914 has a few autobiographical notes. It is probable that Hearne's entry of ‘Dr. John Cowell's (Head of Bennet Coll. Camb.) Itinerary thro' Greece’ as a book which would be ‘of great advantage to the Republick of Letters’ refers to Covel's journals, and not to the work he published in 1722. Covel died unmarried. 

COVELL, WILLIAM, D.D. (d. 1614?), divine, a native of Chatterton, Lancashire, received his academical education at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was elected a fellow of Queens' College in that university in July 1589. The dates of his degrees are as follows: B.A. 1584, M.A. 1588, D.D. 1601. On 2 Jan. 1595–6 Dr. Goade, vice-chancellor of the university, complained to Lord Burghley that Covell, in a sermon at St. Mary's, had railed against noblemen and bishops (Lands. MS. 80, art. 53; and, University Transactions, ii. 87). He was collated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the vicarage of Sittingbourne, Kent, 27 Jan. 1602–3, and he also held the living of Leaveland in the same county, resigning it on 9 May 1603. He was appointed sub-dean of Lincoln 11 Sept. 1609. In the following year he was nominated one of the original fellows of ‘King James's College at Chelsea,’ which was founded by Dr. Matthew Sutcliffe for the maintenance of polemical divines who were to be employed in writing against the doctrines of the Roman catholic church (, Chelsea, ii. 225). He was collated to the prebend of All Saints in Hungate, in the church of Lincoln, 22 Sept. 1612, and he probably died in 1614, in which year his successor in that dignity was nominated.

His works are: 1. ‘A Just and Temperate Defence of the Five Books of Ecclesiastical