COVENTRE, John II, of Wycombe, Bucks.

Coventre is first mentioned in 1412, when he served as a juror in an action of novel disseisin brought by William Clerk II against Ralph atte Lude. In May 1413 he witnessed the Wycombe election to Parliament, and was thereafter present at the borough’s parliamentary elections of 1417, 1420, 1421 (May), 1421 (Dec.), 1425, 1426, 1431, 1432 and 1435, that is, at all but two of the elections between 1414 (when he himself was first returned) and 1435 for which records remain. Meanwhile, in September 1420, Coventre, along with several other burgesses, was granted an annual rent of four marks, issuing from a tenement called the Newe Inn, adjoining the close of Wycombe rectory. Three years later, he was acting as a juror in the manorial court of Bassetsbury (one of the constituent manors of Wycombe) where he also held land. It was probably during this period, too, that Coventre and a fellow burgess, Thomas Averesdell, held land at Stoke Mandeville and Walton, both near Aylesbury, evidently as feoffees on behalf of the Hampdens of Wycombe.JUST 1/1/79/5; C219/11/1, 12/2, 4, 5, 6, 13/3, 4, 14/2, 3, 5; HMC 5th Rep. 562-3; St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV/15/1/m. 4; CAD, iv. A9252. In 1429, though he apparently did not attend the parliamentary election at Wycombe, Coventre was present at the county court at Aylesbury which elected John Hampden† of Hampden and Andrew Sperlyng as knights of the shire, only for their election to be illegally suppressed by the sheriff, (Sir) Thomas Waweton who substituted and returned two men of his own choice. The last dateable record of him occurs in October 1440, when he was present at a meeting of the Wycombe corporation which authorized the grant of a tenement in Crendon Lane. He died at some point within the next four years.C219/14/1; HMC 5th Rep. 563.