Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/366

 COVENTRY, THOMAS (1547–1606), judge, second son of Richard Coventry of Cassington, Oxfordshire, was born in 1547, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he was a fellow, and where he graduated B.A. on 2 June 1565. He studied law at the Inner Temple. His first appearance as a pleader is in a case reported by Croke in Michaelmas term 1589. He was elected reader at the Inner Temple in the autumn of 1593, but, in consequence of an outbreak of plague, his reading was postponed over the winter, and a new serjeant, John Heale, being appointed in the spring, took precedence of him, so that he did not read until the autumn of 1594. In the canvass for the post of solicitor-general, which took place on Coke's appointment to the attorney-generalship (1594–5), Coventry played an active part, and was suspected of having bought Sir Robert Cecil's interest for two thousand angels, as appears from a very blunt letter from Bacon to Cecil, which though undated is probably referable to this period. In 1603 he was appointed serjeant-at-law, in 1605–6 king's serjeant, and in the same year justice of the common pleas, and knighted. He died on 12 Dec. 1606. He was buried at Earle's Croome, otherwise Croome d'Abitot, Worcestershire. According to Dugdale he descended from John Coventrie, mercer, co-sheriff of London with Robert Wydington (no connection of R. Whittington) in 1416, and lord mayor of London in 1425. By his wife, Margaret Jeffreys, of Earle's Croome, he had 3 sons and 4 daughters. His eldest son, [q. v.], was lord keeper in the reign of James I; from the youngest, Walter, the Earl of Coventry traces his descent.



COVENTRY, THOMAS, (1578–1640), lord keeper, eldest son of Sir  [q. v.], was born in 1578 at Earl's Croome, or Croome d'Abitot, Worcestershire. After a private education he was sent to Balliol College, Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1592, but took no degree, and in November 1594 entered the Inner Temple. Coke's reports mention him as an advocate in 1611. With his friends Henry Yelverton and James Whitelocke he joined the Oxford circuit; became bencher of his inn in 1614; autumn reader in 1616, and was elected treasurer for each year between 1617 and 1623. Coventry was noticed favourably by Coke, and thus incurred Bacon's enmity. In 1616 he was a candidate for the recordership of the city of London, and Bacon wrote to the king (13 Nov.): ‘The man upon whom the choice is like to fall, which is Coventry, I hold doubtful for your service; not but that he is well learned and an honest man, but he hath been, as it were, bred by Lord Coke and seasoned in his ways’ (, Life of Bacon, vi. 97). In spite of this opposition Coventry was elected recorder on 16 Nov. Four months later he obtained the solicitor-generalship (14 March 1616–17), and was knighted at the same time. He owed his preferment to the influence of friends and to his reputation as a sound lawyer whose political opinions, although not extreme, coincided in the main with those of the king's supporters. In 1620 he was M.P. for Droitwich. On 11 Jan. 1620–1 he succeeded Sir Henry Yelverton as attorney-general. Almost his first duty was to request of Bacon specific answers to the charges of corruption brought in parliament. In April 1621 he was concerned in the proceedings against Edward Floyd, a Roman catholic, who was reported to have rejoiced over the misfortunes of the elector palatine after the battle of Prague, but he deprecated the brutal sentence passed by the commons. On 1 Nov. 1625 Coventry was summoned to supply Bishop Williams's place as lord keeper of the great seal. When accepting office he thanked the Duke of Buckingham for the favour he had bestowed on him in phrases which, although courtly, showed an independence unusual in contemporary officers of the crown, and he acknowledged very modestly congratulations from Bacon (, vii. 534–5). As lord-keeper, Coventry opened the second parliament of Charles I's reign, and before the close delivered the king's reprimand of the unruly house, which declined to grant an adequate supply without redress of grievances. The commons, he said, had liberty of counsel but not of control (29 March 1626). In May he drew up the questions to be propounded to Sir John Eliot, then under arrest; his manuscript is still at the Record Office. When opening the third parliament in March 1627–8 he announced the royal threat that the prerogative of the crown would be exercised without appeal to parliament in case of further insubordination, and henceforth steadily supported the king, although he treated Buckingham without much respect. On 10 April he was created Baron Coventry of Aylesborough, Worcestershire. When Buckingham applied to him soon afterwards for the office of lord high constable, Coventry declined to grant it him, and a personal altercation ensued. Buckingham taunted Coventry with holding 