COVENTRY, Thomas (1578-1640)

The eldest son of a former justice of Common Pleas, Coventry served as lord keeper under Charles I and was a protégé of the distinguished lawyer Sir Edward Coke^‡, who counted him among his ‘true and faithful friends’.64 CITR, ii. 350. ‘Somewhat broad, and round-faced’, with black hair and ruddy features, he spoke in ‘a kind of graceful lisping’. Described by the earl of Kellie [S] as ‘a very private man’, Coventry, like Coke, had few close associates and was thus, according to Edward Hyde^† (later 1st earl of Clarendon), ‘exceedingly liked’ rather than ‘passionately loved’. However, unlike Coke, who revelled in the discomfiture of others, Coventry was courteous, gentle and humane. These qualities, coupled with a readiness to compromise, helped ensure his political survival as, perhaps, did his ‘strange power of making himself believed’.65 Clarendon, Hist. of the Rebellion, i. 57-8; G. Gordon, Coventrys of Croome, 15; HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 235.

Attorney general 1621-5

Between 1604 and 1617 Coventry established his legal reputation in the City of London, where in 1616 he rose to become recorder before entering royal service as solicitor general. He gave such a good account of himself that, on the dismissal of Sir Henry Yelverton^‡ in January 1621, he was promoted to attorney general. Aged just 42 or 43, he was still relatively young for such high office, as most of the recent occupants had been appointed in their late forties or early fifties. Only Sir Edward Coke, who had been made attorney in 1594, may have been younger.

Shortly before his promotion Coventry was returned to Parliament for Droitwich, a small Worcestershire borough ten miles from his family’s estate. However, he was precluded from sitting in the Commons on becoming the crown’s principal law officer, and so served in the 1621 Parliament as a legal assistant to the House of Lords. There, inter alia, he participated in the prosecutions of Yelverton, Lord Chancellor St. Alban (Francis Bacon*) and the ecclesiastical court judge Sir John Bennet^‡. He also helped advise several Lords’ committees, including one appointed to consider a bill drafted by the Commons for curbing the activities of common informers. This committee, perhaps guided primarily by the lawyers who assisted it, found so many faults with the bill that the Commons were subsequently forced to conclude that a new measure was needed.66 LJ, iii. 75b, 79a, 79b, 177b. Hostility to common informers was not limited to Parliament, of course, and over the summer recess Coventry was approached by the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar, who complained that informers were responsible for an excessive persecution of recusants. However, Coventry was understandably nervous about recommending any relaxation of the financial penalties imposed on recusants.67 Fortescue Pprs. ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. i), 156. Such a course of action would not only lessen the king’s revenues but also enrage the Commons, whose aversion to informers was exceeded only by their fear of papists.

Coventry donated £100 in 1622 to the benevolence raised by the crown for the recovery of the upper Palatinate, which had been overrun by imperial forces.68 SP14/156/15. In January 1624 the newsletter-writer John Chamberlain, a well-informed source, reported that Coventry would soon be promoted to lord chief justice of King’s Bench.69 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 471. This rumour almost certainly originated with the growing antagonism between the prince of Wales (Charles Stuart^*) and George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham on the one hand, and the lord keeper, John Williams^*, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York), on the other. Charles and Buckingham wished to break off the marriage negotiations with Spain, while Williams favoured their continuation. However, for the time being Williams remained secure in his post, and therefore the anticipated judicial reshuffle consequent upon his dismissal failed to materialize.

During the 1624 Parliament Coventry again served as a legal assistant in the Lords, where proceedings were dominated by the impeachment of the lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex. Together with Sir Ranulphe Crewe^‡, the king’s serjeant, he vigorously presented the charges against the lord treasurer. Middlesex, who was expected to defend himself in person without the aid of legal counsel, bitterly resented the ferocity with which he was prosecuted, and complained to the House of ‘unchristian-like’ treatment. However, the Lords bridled at this slur and cleared the two law officers of any misconduct.70 Ibid. 559; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, ff. 63, 68v; Add. 40088, ff. 73r-v, 84.

Following the end of the Parliament the king ordered a relaxation of the penal laws against Catholics in order to facilitate a French marriage for Prince Charles. However, an inquiry was mounted after the French ambassador complained in August of continuing ‘great persecutions’. For his part, Coventry declared that ‘I have not violated one syllable’ of the king’s instructions. Indeed, he was sure that he ‘could use no greater moderation’.71 SP14/171/28. For the ambassador’s complaint, see Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 98. However, he remained concerned at the likely reaction of the political nation at large to a de facto toleration of Catholics, and in March 1625 cautioned against suspending the one shilling fine imposed on recusants for not attending church, as it would ‘cause so general a divulging of his Majesty’s purposes in these matters’.72 Stuart Dynastic Policy, 113.

During the first half of the 1620s Coventry entered the orbit of the royal favourite, Buckingham. As early as October 1622 he acted for Buckingham in a case involving the copyholders of a Cambridgeshire manor; and in December 1624 he formed part of the favourite’s legal team in a Chancery lawsuit between Buckingham and members of his own family.73 C2/Jas.I/B37/53; 2/Jas.I/B9/36. It was to Coventry, and also to the solicitor general Sir Robert Heath^‡, that in 1625 Buckingham entrusted the delicate task of investigating the infidelity of the duke’s sister-in-law, Viscountess Purbeck. Indeed, in February Buckingham declared that, for the purpose of discovering the truth, Coventry and Heath were the two men on ‘whose love to me I principally rely’. Buckingham depended implicitly upon both men for their advice, as a result of which Lady Purbeck and her lover, Sir Robert Howard^‡, were placed in the custody of separate London aldermen and tried in High Commission.74 P.E. Kopperman, Sir Robert Heath, 52; HMC Cowper, i. 181; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 478; G. Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, ii. 376-8; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 814.

Coventry again served as a legal assistant to the Lords when Parliament met in 1625, though his duties were largely confined to carrying messages from the upper House to the Commons. During the August sitting, plague having forced Parliament to decamp to Oxford, he stayed in the lodgings of the president of Corpus Christi College.75 Procs. 1625, p. 662.

Following the dissolution, Buckingham resolved to secure the dismissal of Lord Keeper Williams, whom he suspected of having fomented discontent in the Commons. He initially offered the post to the puritan divine Dr John Preston, master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a move calculated to appease the duke’s puritan critics. However, as Preston had little interest in high office Buckingham turned instead to Coventry who, in addition to being regarded as one of the duke’s dependants, was reputed to be ‘a great favourer of the puritans’.76 Life of the Renowned Doctor Preston ed. E.W. Harcourt, 117; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 238; Newsletters of the Caroline Court 1631-8 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi), 157-8. This reputation was evidently well deserved, for among those ministers of a godly persuasion who later dedicated publications to Coventry were William Gouge, the puritan preacher of St Ann Blackfriars, and Daniel Featley, former chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot^*.77 W. Gouge, The Workes of William Gouge in two volumes (1627), sig. A2r-v; D. Featley, Transubstantiation exploded: or an encounter with Richard bishop of Chalcedon (1638), sig. A2r-v.

Coventry took at least two weeks to consider Buckingham’s offer, possibly because the fate of the previous two incumbents did not augur well. However, by 13 Sept. he had overcome his private doubts, and on 30 Oct. he was sworn in, Williams having been forced to resign.78 Harl. 1581, ff. 328r-v; APC, 1625-6, p. 223. In his letter of acceptance, Coventry indicates that he was offered the lord keepership when he and Buckingham were at Southampton. Buckingham is known to have been at Holbury, near Southampton, on 26 and 27 Aug.: CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 90, 91. Coventry’s grant passed the great seal on 1 Nov.: Rymer, viii. pt. 1, p. 157. Despite owing his advancement to Buckingham, Coventry was widely welcomed in his new role.79 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, v. 441; NLW, 9060E/1377; CSP Dom. Addenda 1625-49, p. 60; C115/108/8632. Indeed, three weeks after taking up office one seasoned observer remarked that he had gained ‘every man’s good opinion and applause’ by carrying himself ‘with great modesty and judgement’.80 Procs. 1625, p. 725. Coventry himself was naturally delighted at his own elevation and commissioned a pair of elaborate silver cups, made from the melted down great seals of James I, to commemorate the occasion. One is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the other is at Longleat House, in Wiltshire (the home of one of his daughters).81 V and A, Mus. no. M.59:1,2-1993); Gordon, 21-2.

Speaker of the House of Lords, 1626

As attorney general, Coventry had carried on much of his official business from the Inner Temple, where he had built chambers at his own cost. However, following his appointment as lord keeper, Coventry was obliged to resign the treasurership of the Inner Temple, the office which had justified his continued use of his chambers, and look for alternative accommodation.82 CITR, ii. 151, 174. By mid December 1625 he had moved to Dorset Court, near Fleet Street, a property which he already leased, probably from Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset and where he remained until at least the end of March 1626.83 CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 180, 192; Add. 38483, f. 106; Procs. 1626, i. 284-5.

One of Coventry’s earliest duties as lord keeper was to help prepare for a new Parliament, which was summoned to meet in February 1626. On 26 Dec. 1625, the day on which writs of election were issued, he notified Sir Heneage Finch^‡, recorder of London and a fellow Inner Templar, that the king had selected him to serve as Speaker of the Commons. Finch subsequently conferred with Coventry concerning the speech he would be required to make when Parliament met, submitting both a summary of its main points ten days beforehand and a copy of the full text the evening before Parliament opened.84 HMC Finch, i. 44.

Now that he was lord keeper, Coventry was in a position to influence a handful of elections to the House of Commons. At Droitwich, where he himself had been elected in December 1620, he secured the return of his eldest son, Thomas Coventry^† (later 2nd Lord Coventry), and at Evesham, another Worcestershire borough situated close to his family’s estates, he engineered the return of his son-in-law Sir John Hare^‡ of Stow Bardolph, in Norfolk. In addition, though he admitted to being ‘a stranger’ to the corporation, he obtained a seat at Cambridge for John Thompson^‡, one of his secretaries, and another for Thomas Meautys^‡, one of the clerks of the Privy Council.85 On Thompson, see Cooper, iii. 183-4. Coventry’s responsibility for Meauty’s return is strongly implied in Coventry’s letter recommending Meautys for a seat in 1628: ibid. 200. The latter had relied on Lord Chancellor St Alban for a seat in 1621, but, being disliked by Lord Keeper Williams, had been unable to find a place in 1624.86 HP Commons, 1604-29, v. 314, 315.

As lord keeper, Coventry was ex officio Speaker of the House of Lords. However, he had not been ennobled, despite enjoying Buckingham’s favour. Consequently, he was the first head of Chancery since Sir Thomas Egerton^* (later Viscount Brackley) in 1601 not to be a member of the Lords himself. This meant that, though he was expected to guide proceedings, he could not leave the woolsack to participate in debate himself, nor could he serve on any committees or attend any conferences with the lower House. In addition, he had no vote, nor could he hold another peer’s proxy. Despite these severe limitations on his personal authority, Coventry performed his duties as Speaker with competence and perhaps even skill. In his short opening address to both Houses on 6 Feb., described as ‘admirable’ by the Tuscan ambassador, he tactfully glossed over the disappointing Parliament of 1625 to remind his listeners that the king, while still prince of Wales, had shown that he understood ‘the true use of parliaments’, having attended the House of Lords on a daily basis, participated ‘in all conferences of importance’, and frequently interceded with his father. He also did not dwell upon the fact that this new Parliament had been summoned primarily to vote money for the war with Spain, but instead remarked that the king’s occasions were such that they ‘forbid him to prolong the sitting of this Parliament’. The omission, noticed by the 1st Lord Montagu (Edward Montagu^*), was clearly deliberate, and suggests that, like the former lord chancellor, Viscount St Alban, Coventry believed that the king should not appear before his Parliament as a mendicant, no matter how great his need.87 Procs. 1626, i. 20-1, 25; HMC Skrine, 45. On Bacon’s advice, see HP Commons, 1604-29, i. 401.

Two days later, Coventry again addressed both Houses in the presence of the king. Once again his speech was well crafted, but it differed from his earlier address by its admission that recently all had not been well in the body politic. As well as calling on members of both Houses to continue ‘free from ... unfortunate aspects’, he conceded that the cause of true religion had lately seemed ‘to droop and hang down the head’, a reference to the fact that the enforcement of the penal laws had been relaxed in order to accommodate Charles’s marriage to a Catholic princess. However, Coventry went out his way to exonerate Charles himself, saying that the king had set his subjects a shining example by his daily attendance of his private chapel; indeed, ‘the public service and administrations of the sacraments [have] never [been] so duly observed before’. In addition, he pointed out that Charles had heeded the petition presented to him at the end of the previous Parliament, having issued a proclamation requiring the recusancy laws to be more vigorously enforced. As a result, ‘the priests and Jesuits that not long since did gaze upon the sun at noon, now, by his Majesty’s proclamation and public justice dare not walk in owl light, but rather withdraw themselves or else lurk in corners’.88 Procs. 1626, i. 34-5.

Over the course of the next four months, Coventry, constrained by his status as a non-member, kept his personal opinions largely to himself. It is, of course, true that on 29 Mar. he strongly rebuked the Commons at Whitehall during a meeting between the king and both Houses. He accused them of failing to understand the difference ‘between counselling and controlling, between liberty and abuse of liberty’ and of allowing themselves to be diverted into attacking Buckingham on the basis of mere common fame.89 Ibid. ii. 392-4. However, it is clear from surviving reports of this speech that Coventry was simply expressing the views of the king. Throughout the Parliament, Coventry naturally kept in close touch with Charles, who gave him his instructions. Though the surviving evidence seldom affords us any glimpse of their meetings, it is occasionally possible to discern one of their discussions. For instance, on 2 May, after the Lords asked Coventry to speak to Charles about releasing the 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel (Thomas Howard^*) from his imprisonment, Coventry replied that the king ‘had speech with him the last night’, and told him that when the Parliament’s ‘great businesses’ had been completed they should have an answer ‘with convenient speed’.90 Ibid. i. 349.

Coventry’s only opportunity to speak with anything like his own voice occurred when strangers or accused members appeared at the bar of the House. As Speaker, he alone had the right to question individuals at the bar, except in cases of a judicial nature, when selected legal assistants were entitled to lay charges and rebut the defence. Being a trained lawyer, Coventry was naturally well suited to this task. During the debates between counsel concerning the rightful descent of the earldom of Oxford and the office of lord great chamberlain, he frequently interjected with questions or observations of a legal nature.91 Ibid. 114-16, 243-4. On 1 May, when the 1st earl of Bristol (John Digby^*) was indicted of treason, he tried to silence the defendant when the latter attempted to lay charges of his own against Buckingham, saying that he had come to be accused rather than to accuse.92 Ibid. 343; CSP Ven. 1625-6, pp. 415-16.

The king’s decision in mid June to dissolve the Parliament rather than sacrifice Buckingham for a grant of subsidies caused ‘infinite rejoicing’ among ‘all the duke’s friends’.93 Warws. RO, CR136/B108. However, this did not include Coventry, for the evening before the dissolution the lord keeper reportedly went down on his knees and begged Charles to reconsider.94 Rous Diary ed. M.A. Everett Green (Cam. Soc. lxvi), 3. This must have taken some courage, for more than one observer thought that it placed Coventry in danger of losing his office.95 CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 462; C.R. Manning, ‘News-Letters of Sir Edmund Moundeford’, Norf. Arch. v. 62. Cust’s claim that Charles actually threatened Coventry with dismissal appears to be unfounded: R. Cust, Forced Loan, 13. It also suggests that Coventry no longer saw eye to eye with the duke. Certainly there is evidence from another quarter that relations between the two men were by now strained. A few weeks earlier the king had announced that he wished the vacant position of chancellor of the university of Cambridge to be conferred on Buckingham. Against the backdrop of ‘a strong rumour’ that Coventry would either be ‘thrust out of his place’ or demoted, Coventry’s friends put the lord keeper’s name forward and, regardless of Buckingham, campaigned ‘with much heat’ on his behalf until the night before the election.96 NLW, 9061E/1410; Cooper, iii. 185-8; Add. 44848, f. 205v; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 108; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 228.

The Forced Loan and the parliamentary session of 1628

Over the late summer of 1626, following a series of debates in Council, the king resolved to levy a Forced Loan rather than summon another Parliament. Despite promptly paying his own contribution,97 E403/1913, unfol. (payment of 17 Oct. 1626). Coventry sympathized with the judges who, early in November, declined to endorse the Loan. Indeed, he and the lord treasurer, the 1st earl of Marlborough (James Ley^*), urged an angry Charles not to press the judges to do ‘that which they held contrary to the law and against their oath’.98 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 164. However, this advice fell on deaf ears, and on 10 Nov. Charles gave vent to his fury by dismissing the kingdom’s most senior judge, the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir Ranulphe Crewe.99 G. Croke, Third Part of the Reps. of Sir George Croke (1683), 52. Over the next few days, two well-placed observers reported that Coventry would soon lose his place too for having supported his judicial colleagues.100 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 312; Holles Letters ed. P. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 337. However, Coventry somehow managed to avoid this fate, perhaps by appearing to give the levy the judicial sanction that the king craved. In the spring of 1627 he announced in Star Chamber that all the judges had voluntarily contributed to the Loan and that only one of them – presumably Crewe – had maintained that the Loan was illegal.101 Cust, Forced Loan, 69, 70, citing FSL, V. b. ff. 73-4. Coventry may also have earned himself a reprieve by canvassing support for the Loan. In January 1627 he and several other councillors went to Norwich to persuade the Norfolk gentry to contribute. There they proved so successful that they took several payments before leaving.102 Cust, Forced Loan, 114, 116.

By avoiding dismissal, Coventry ensured that he remained an important voice of moderation on the Council. It seems likely that in late November 1626 he was one of those responsible for narrowly defeating a proposal to imprison those peers who refused to pay the Loan. He certainly took the lead in March 1627, when the Council debated whether to hang a number of Loan refusers next to their homes. After pointing out that ‘none were liable to martial law but martial men’, he appealed to the other two lawyers on the board, the lord president (Henry Montagu, 1st earl of Manchester) and Lord Treasurer Marlborough who, somewhat reluctantly, gave him their support.103 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 177, 208. This continued refusal to abandon legal principles and back Buckingham and the other hardliners on the Council meant that Coventry’s position remained precarious. In February 1627 John Holles^†, Lord Houghton (later 2nd earl of Clare), reported that it was ‘the universal belief of this town’ that Coventry would shortly be dismissed, despite having made strenuous efforts to please the ‘mair du palais’, Buckingham.104 Holles Letters, 345. Eleven weeks later, at the beginning of May, one well informed observer reported that Coventry would soon be displaced by Buckingham’s close ally William Laud^*, bishop of St Davids (later archbishop of Canterbury), as ‘the duke saith that the lord keeper begins to be so great that it is more than time to remove him’.105 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 318. Buckingham’s belief that Coventry was now too big for his boots was not perhaps without foundation. In April 1627 the lord keeper’s eldest son, Thomas, married Mary Craven, the daughter of a wealthy London alderman. Furthermore, Coventry was negotiating to marry off one of his daughters to Mary’s brother William Craven^*, who had recently been ennobled as Lord Craven, a match which would have linked Coventry to the nobility.106 Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 209-11; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 708.

Coventry was one of the moderate members of the Council who persuaded the king over the winter of 1627-8 to summon a Parliament, and in February 1628, after a bout of illness, he helped defeat moves to postpone this new assembly.107 R. Cust, ‘Chas. I, the Privy Council and the Parl. of 1628’, TRHS, 6th ser. ii. 27; idem, Forced Loan, 72, 85. For his illness, see Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 191; Croke, 65. Following the issue of writs of election he once again used his influence to secure a seat in the Commons for the Council clerk Thomas Meautys, and another for his son-in-law, Sir John Hare.108 Cooper, iii. 200. During the Parliament, Hare stayed with Coventry at Ely House, in Holborn, part of which belonged to the bishops of Ely.109 Procs. 1628, p. 204. At least part of Ely House belonged to Lady Hatton, the estranged wife of Sir Edward Coke, and was known as Hatton House. CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 14, 206. Conveniently situated for the Inns of Court and Chancery, Ely House was rented by Coventry from at least December 1626, there being then no bishop following the death of Nicholas Felton^* the previous October.110 Northants. RO, Th 309; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 175. However, Ely House was not Coventry’s sole residence, for during the summer months he normally retired to Canonbury House, in Islington, a fourteenth century pile rebuilt in the reign of Henry VIII and owned by the Spencer earls of Northampton.111 G.J. Evans, An Illustrated Account of St Bartholomew’s Prior’s Church, Smithfield, 56, 58; VCH Mdx. viii. 54, 55. Coventry leased Canonbury, or Canbury as it was usually known, from at least August 1626. Indeed, it was from there that he drew up the first of the commissions for the Forced Loan in September 1626.112 CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 402, 435. For proof that Coventry lived in Islington rather than Canbury, Surr., see D. Lysons, Environs of London, iii. 155; Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, 215-16.

When the new Parliament opened on 17 Mar., Coventry, as was required of a lord keeper, addressed both Houses. After setting out the desperate state of the Protestant cause abroad, and having reminded the Commons that in 1624 they had promised to assist the king with their lives and goods, he emphasized that the king had chosen to call a Parliament, ‘a way that hath ever been best pleasing to the subjects of England’, rather than raise money by other means. He added that he himself wholeheartedly approved of this decision, thereby distancing himself from the hardliners on the Council who had persuaded Charles to levy a Forced Loan rather than summon another Parliament. However, he also hinted that Parliament was now on probation, as he urged his listeners to model their behaviour on the most successful parliaments of the past. A successful meeting would serve not only as ‘a pattern’ to future parliaments but would also ensure that Parliament met more frequently. While Coventry’s speech undoubtedly ‘expressed the sense of deliverance’ felt by the moderates on the Council, it also underlined the widespread fear that, unless relations between the king and his subjects improved, the English Parliament was headed for extinction.113 CD 1628, ii. 3-7. The quotation is from Cust, Forced Loan, 86.

When Parliament reassembled two days later, Coventry again addressed both Houses, this time in response to the Speaker’s customary disabling speech. Unfairly dismissed by a newsletter-writer who was not present as ‘nothing but a repetition and an approbation of what the Speaker said before’, this second speech is chiefly remarkable for expressing the view that England, then at war with both Spain and France, was engaged in fighting ‘the battles of Jehovah’. Victory, declared Coventry, would win for England and her king the honour of restoring Christendom to ‘a right balance’. All were bound to assist Charles in this great endeavour, not least, he added, in a remark directed at the Commons, because ‘you have encouraged him’.114 Procs. 1628, p. 182; CD 1628, ii. 23-4.

Less than one month after the Parliament opened, on 10 Apr., Coventry was ennobled by writ of summons as Baron Coventry of ‘Aylesborough’. (The territorial suffix refers to Allesborough in Pershore, a property in Worcestershire that Coventry had acquired in 1622.) On the face of it this is surprising, as there is no evidence that a rapprochement with Buckingham had taken place, and it seems unlikely that the king, in the middle of a Parliament, had suddenly decided that the Speaker of the Lords should be a member of the upper House. One possible explanation is that Coventry’s ennoblement was a reward for the moderate faction on the Council, which scored a major success on 4 Apr., when, to Charles’s delight, the Commons agreed in principle to vote five subsidies, so vindicating the moderates in their belief that the solution to the king’s financial difficulties lay in Parliament rather than elsewhere.115 HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 612. However, the chief architect of this success was not Coventry but his fellow moderate councillor, Secretary of State Sir John Coke^‡. The two men were certainly close allies – as early as September 1625 Coventry had written in friendly terms to Coke – but it is hard to believe that Charles rewarded Coventry for Coke’s success.116 HMC Cowper, i. 211.

A more plausible explanation for Coventry’s ennoblement lies in the Commons’ request, on 7 Apr., for a conference concerning ‘some ancient and fundamental laws of the kingdom’. At the ensuing meeting, held that same afternoon, the Commons’ spokesmen protested against the Council’s recent practice of imprisoning Loan refusers without formally revealing the cause. Over the next few days the Lords, many of whom sympathized with the crown rather than the Commons, began to consider the matters raised by the lower House.117 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 159, 167, 171-9, 182-3. However Coventry, not being a peer, was not only prevented from participating in these discussions but also from taking part in debate with the Commons. This was unfortunate, to say the least, as it was clear that the Lords would struggle to match the legal expertise of the Commons, around 13 per cent of whom were lawyers.118 HP Commons, 1604-29, i. 173. Only two peers, the earls of Manchester and Marlborough, fell into this category, and Marlborough had been absent due to illness ever since the Parliament began, while Manchester was hard of hearing. (The House’s legal assistants, though numerous, were normally barred from participating in conferences with the Commons.)119 Ibid. 349. Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that Charles decided to ennoble the lord keeper, who was formally introduced to the upper House as a peer on the 14th.120 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 216. In the attendance record for 12 Apr. he is listed without his aristocratic title: LJ, iii. 734b, 736a.

It did not take long for the Lords to call upon the services of the newly ennobled Coventry, for on 16 Apr. the 3rd earl of Pembroke (William Herbert^*) suggested that the findings of the judges in respect of the liberties of the subject should be presented to the Commons by the lord keeper.121 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 245, 247. However, it also soon became clear that Coventry would not, in fact, be required to bear the brunt of arguing the crown’s legal case before the Commons, as that same day the lower House waived its historic objection to debating with the Lords’ legal assistants.122 CD 1628, ii. 483, 487. This left the Lords free to employ the services of the attorney general, Sir Robert Heath^‡, who quickly assumed responsibility for debating matters of law with the Commons. Coventry nevertheless kicked off proceedings at the conference held on the afternoon of the 16th. Though his remarks were primarily prefatory in nature, he declared that the judges in the Five Knights’ Case of 1627, which had resulted in five Loan refusers being denied the right to a trial, had done nothing contrary to law or the liberties of the subject. He also affirmed that Magna Carta and those other statutes which concerned the subject’s rights remained in force.123 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 249; CD 1628, iii. 5.

Although Heath was now mainly responsible for putting the crown’s case at conferences, Coventry quickly emerged as a key figure in the Lords’ debates over the Commons’ demand for an end to arbitrary imprisonment. On 22 Apr., during a meeting of the committee of the whole House, Coventry asked to know ‘what latitude will be left for the regal part when the legal part is so settled that all coercion is taken from the king and his Council?’ The Commons were acting as though the law of the land was synonymous with the common law, behaviour which, if accepted, would have the effect of overthrowing those courts, such as Chancery, which ‘are not settled by the common law’. In some cases it was perfectly proper for the Privy Council to refrain from explaining to the courts why it had ordered the commitment of certain individuals. Indeed, the practice was ‘very ancient’ and an important feature of England’s legal tradition, since ‘the custom of England time out of mind is the law of England’. Consequently, were the Commons to ‘weaken the proceedings of the Council board’ they would inevitably ‘weaken the law’. These arguments irritated one of the Commons’ chief allies in the upper House, William Fiennes^*, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, who observed that, while trust had ultimately to be reposed in the king, it was not necessary or desirable to do so ‘in ordinary course of justice’. However, his attempt to discredit one of the precedents cited by Coventry provoked a swift rebuttal.124 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 322-3, 327, 329.

The next day the Lords appointed an 18-strong committee to consider how to respond to the Commons. The committee agreed to recommend that a further conference be held, and on the following day its members were charged with planning the meeting. However, they ‘agreed on nothing’, despite spending ‘a long time’ in the Painted Chamber. On 25 Apr. the committee again met, ‘the lord keeper being one’, but this time it returned with the draft of a proposition to be presented to the Commons by the king.125 Ibid. 333, 340, 713.

In early May the Commons resolved that the best way to secure the liberties of the subject was by means of a Petition of Right. On 9 May the Lords appointed a committee to discuss the Petition, to which body Coventry was the first named. The next morning Coventry reported that the committee thought it desirable to make seven, non-substantive changes to the wording of the Petition. However, the Commons disliked most of the recommended changes, and therefore on 14 May the Lords appointed a committee, to which Coventry was named, to set down their reasons.126 Ibid. 400, 405-6, 421, 715.

While the two Houses were considering relatively minor changes to the wording of the Petition, the king intervened with a far more significant objection to the text. In a letter addressed to the Lords and shown to the Commons, Charles declared that he could not, ‘without the overthrow of sovereignty’, allow his right to imprison without cause to be impeached.127 CD 1628, iii. 373. Coventry sympathized with this view, as did a majority of members in the upper House, and on 14 May the Lords resolved to ask the Commons to amend the Petition accordingly.128 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 425, 433. However, at the ensuing conference the Commons, guided by Coventry’s friend and former mentor Sir Edward Coke, declined to take notice of Charles’s letter, on the grounds that the king was not entitled to respond to the Petition until after it had been presented. Coventry, who acted as the Lords’ spokesman at this meeting, denied that the king had behaved in an unparliamentary fashion, as his letter did not, in fact, constitute an answer to the Petition. As he explained, it merely sought to ensure that the Petition was framed in such a way that it would achieve ‘the end we expect’. However the Commons remained unmoved, prompting Buckingham to propose, after the peers had returned to their own chamber, that the Lords should amend the Petition themselves in line with Charles’s wishes. Coventry, like the rest of the House, considered this an excellent idea, for although the Commons would not take notice of the letter, they would have little choice but to confer with the Lords once the latter had altered the text.129 CD 1628, iii. 407, 409; Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 423, 427, 433. The Lords therefore redrafted the Petition in such a way as to circumscribe rather than prohibit the king’s right to imprison without showing cause.130 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 445, 452.

Over the course of the following week Coventry remained in the thick of the debates over the wording of the Petition. At a conference between the Houses on 19 May, Coke complained that the Lords had watered down the clause relating to the use of commissions of martial law in time of peace by adding the caveat that it should still be legal to issue such commissions to govern the behaviour of soldiers and sailors, ‘which would overthrow the whole scope and intention of our Petition in the point complained of’. However, Coventry retorted that in cases of mutiny the crown could not be expected to proceed by the normal courses of the common law, as ‘the whole army might fall to pieces ... before an indictment can be drawn and a jury [em]pannelled’.131 CD 1628, iii. 485-6. Coventry also wrestled with Coke over the Petition’s description of the oath administered to those who refused to contribute to the Forced Loan as ‘unlawful’. He and his fellow peers had initially suggested that this word should be replaced with the phrase ‘new and unusual’, but since this proposal had not found favour he now proposed ‘unwarrantable’ instead.132 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 406, 478. Coke was baffled by this suggestion, for as he told the Commons, the two words conveyed the same sense, since what was warranted by the law was lawful and what was not warranted by the law was unlawful. However, because the only difference was one of tone rather than meaning, the Commons reluctantly accepted the alteration.133 CD 1628, iii. 501.

On 17 May the chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Weston (Richard Weston^*, later 1st earl of Portland) proposed adding a clause to the Petition to reassure the king that the Petition left intact the ‘sovereign power wherewith your Majesty is trusted for the protection, safety and happiness of your people’. This proposal attracted widespread support across the upper House, and temporarily united hard line members of the Council such as the 4th earl of Dorset (Edward Sackville^*) with moderates like Coventry.134 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 453, 480, 487. However, the Commons were understandably appalled. As Sir Edward Coke explained on 20 May, by claiming that the king possessed a sovereign power that was superior to acts of Parliament, this new clause undermined the whole Petition. Over the next few days the Lords were forced to decide whether to assent to the Petition as it stood, or to insist on Weston’s addition. Under the influence of its more moderate members like Coventry, the House resolved on 23 May to lay aside the new clause, thereby paving the way for agreement. Consequently, on 28 May Coventry formally delivered the Petition to the king on behalf of both Houses.135 CD 1628, iii. 503, 580; iv. 9.

Coventry avoided acrimony in his dealings with the Commons, even when the two Houses disagreed over the wording to be employed in the Petition. Indeed, Coventry seems to have gone out of his way to preserve harmony, describing publicly the meeting with representatives of the Commons on 20 May as ‘a brotherly and kind conference’.136 Ibid. iii. 500. Coventry also managed to avoid serious criticism from his fellow peers. However, he was not above reproach, for on 5 May the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux^*) laid a fault at his door, albeit indirectly. Essex complained that peers were now being required to answer on oath rather than on their honour in courts of law. The matter was immediately referred to the committee for privileges which, the following day, unanimously recommended that peers should be required to answer on their honour alone whenever they appeared as defendants. Coventry was alarmed by this recommendation, as it had recently been ruled in Star Chamber, over which court he himself presided, that peers were required to answer upon oath. Speaking in his capacity as a peer he offered to provide precedents justifying this decision. However, during the ensuing debate, which was held in a committee of the whole House, he was opposed by the 2nd earl of Hertford (William Seymour^*), who, while arguing that a protestation upon honour was ‘equal with an oath’, claimed that precedent proved that peers swore on their honour alone. He was also contradicted by his fellow lawyer, the earl of Manchester, who claimed that the precedents did not all point in the same direction and that Star Chamber had actually decided to require peers to answer on their honour. Faced with these criticisms, Coventry wisely beat a hasty retreat. After admitting that he had personally required peers to answer on oath, he begged forgiveness if it now appeared that he had erred. He also pointed out that he had not seen the precedents viewed by the committee, and added that he was very far from thinking that a decision made in Star Chamber could ‘determine the privilege of this House’. Following this about turn, the House unanimously voted that peers were, by ancient right, entitled to answer in court on their honour whenever they were defendants.137 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 378, 382-4, 386-7.

As Speaker of the Lords, Coventry was sometimes required to act as spokesman for both Houses. Consequently it was he who, on 7 June, delivered to the king the request of both the Commons and Lords for a clearer answer to the Petition of Right. However, as a peer, Coventry was also capable of acting as a reporter, and on 16 June he laid before the House the results of a conference with the Commons regarding the crown’s plan, never implemented, to raise money by means of an excise duty.138 Ibid. 600, 646. So far as is known, Coventry pursued no private business during the session. He nevertheless kept a close eye on the affairs of an eight-year-old royal ward Sir John Pakington, 2nd bt.^‡, since he was one of the boy’s guardians. Consequently, on 23 June he moved, on behalf of Pakington’s mother, for the addition of certain words to an order made by the House five days earlier on the matter.139 Ibid. 660, 661, 689, 692; HP Commons, 1604-29, v. 587.

Following the prorogation, Coventry’s relationship with Buckingham, already severely strained, seems to have worsened. The lord keeper evidently attracted much of the blame for divisions within the House of Lords over the Commons’ campaign to secure the liberties of the subject. He may also have incurred the duke’s wrath for the even-handed manner in which he had attempted, on 13 May, to defuse an argument between Buckingham and Arundel over whether the House had been entitled to continue sitting the previous afternoon to debate the Petition of Right or whether it had been adjourned.140 Procs. 1628, p. 187; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 416. However, according to Sir Anthony Weldon, a former clerk comptroller of the board of Green Cloth, it was not until the summer of 1628 that Coventry and Buckingham quarrelled violently. After reminding Coventry of his dependency upon him, Buckingham threatened to sack the lord keeper, who allegedly retorted that ‘did I conceive I held my place by your favour, I would presently unmake myself by rendering the seal to his Majesty’. Weldon’s impression of a violent rift between the two men is confirmed by Sir Simonds D’Ewes^‡, who claimed in his autobiography that Coventry would have been dismissed had Buckingham not been assassinated in August. The cause of the quarrel remains unknown, but it may be relevant that at the Council table in July 1628 Coventry described Thomas Scott^‡ of Canterbury, a vehement opponent of the duke, as ‘an honest man’, even though Scott stood accused, entirely fairly, of having incited his neighbours not to contribute towards the cost of billeting troops.141 Procs. 1628, p. 233.

The parliamentary Session of 1629

Following the appointment of John Buckeridge^* as bishop of Ely in July 1628, Coventry was obliged once again to change his London address. By mid November 1628 he was living at Durham House, on the Strand. Situated next to Buckingham’s former riverside palace, and rented from the bishop of Durham, Durham House provided Coventry with such easy access to Whitehall that, after the lord keeper’s death, the king instructed the bishop to transfer the lease to Coventry’s successor, Lord Finch (John Finch^†).142 CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 132, 386; 1639-40, p. 358.

When Parliament reassembled in January 1629 the House of Lords found itself with little to do, the chief purpose of the meeting being to enable the Commons to place the collection of Tunnage and Poundage on a statutory basis. The peers therefore soon fell to considering their own grievances, chiefly the fact that on local commissions English barons were outranked by the holders of Irish and Scottish viscountcies. Like most of his fellow peers, Coventry was vehemently opposed to allowing peers with foreign titles precedence over the holders of English peerages, for in April 1629, after the Parliament had been dissolved, he was ‘earnest’ with the king on the subject.143 C115/99/7242.

This was not the only matter of honour with which Coventry was concerned during the 1629 session. On arriving at the chamber on the morning of 5 Feb., he was presented with a printed summary of a Chancery lawsuit by Francis Leak^*, 1st Lord Deincourt. This lawsuit concerned rent arrears owed by Deincourt, and the summary contained two passages that ‘tended to the dishonour’ of both Chancery and Coventry himself. Not surprisingly, Coventry complained to the House. When Deincourt tried to explain himself, he made a bad situation worse by casting further aspersions on the lord keeper. Under pressure from his friends, the hapless peer apologized for causing offence, whereupon the House cleared Coventry of any wrongdoing. However, one week later, after a petition from Deincourt’s stepmother was read to the House, Deincourt ‘fell into some of his former errors in somewhat taxing the lord keeper, which the Lords much misliked’.144 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 333-4, 337; LJ, iv. 20b, 21a.

Coventry was absent from the House on 16 Feb. due to sickness, his place being taken by the earl of Manchester. The diarist Sir Richard Hutton, who misdated this episode to 15/16 Jan., claimed that Coventry was afflicted with gout in one of his knees.145 LJ, iv. 32a, 32b; Diary of Sir Richard Hutton ed. W.R. Prest (Selden Soc. suppl. ser. ix), 75-6. However, the illness was of short duration, as Coventry resumed his attendance when the House reassembled on the 19th. Following the dramatic events in the Commons of 2 Mar., when the Speaker was held down in his chair, Coventry dissolved the assembly in the presence of the king. In the immediate aftermath of the Parliament, the Privy Council met to decide how to deal with those nine Members who were considered responsible for the violent disturbance in the Commons. The crypto-Catholic lord treasurer, Lord Weston, desired that they be punished harshly, since he himself had been roundly abused in the lower House as a papist, a ‘Spanish pensioner’ and a ‘relation of the Jesuits’. By contrast, Coventry, ‘with a large party’, favoured a more gentle approach. The king, however, sympathized with Weston, and ordered that the malefactors, who had already been sent to the Tower, be prosecuted in Star Chamber.146 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 580; H. Hulme, Life of Sir John Eliot, 318. Coventry and his fellow moderate Manchester were regarded with displeasure for their apparent sympathy for the troublemakers in the Commons, and it was rumoured that they would soon be expelled from court. It was also said that Coventry would shortly be replaced as lord keeper by the bishop of London, William Laud, whose suitability for the position Buckingham had urged two years earlier.147 CSP Ven. 1628-9, p. 589; Add. 35331, f. 28; Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, ii. 20.

Charles’s determination to prosecute the nine ringleaders of the disturbances in the Commons led to the commencement of Star Chamber proceedings in May 1629. For Coventry, this prospect must have seemed rather alarming, for as lord keeper he himself was president of Star Chamber and would therefore have to supervise the conduct of the trial. However, in early June the defendants refused to answer the charges against them, arguing that offences committed in the Commons were examinable only by the House’s own Members. Coventry was now on the horns of a dilemma, for although he had a duty to uphold the jurisdiction of his court he was also reluctant to strike a blow at Parliament’s privileges. Faced with choosing between the king’s wishes on the one hand and the privileges of Parliament on the other, the lord keeper adopted the only sensible course of action open to him: he persuaded Charles to refer the matter to the judges. On 9 June a majority of the judges ruled that the defendants’ demurrer was sound, leaving Charles with little choice but to abandon the prosecution.148 Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, i. 413-14; Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, ii. 18; Hulme, 322.

Charles subsequently determined on fresh proceedings in King’s Bench, whereupon Coventry, in conference with Manchester, Secretary of State Viscount Dorchester (Dudley Carleton^*) and Attorney General Heath, resolved, on 9 Sept., that since the offences committed were not capital the prisoners were capable of being bailed. This may have represented an attempt by moderate members of the Council to pave the way for a settlement, but if so it ended in failure, as the crown demanded that the prisoners first become bound for their good behaviour, something that most of them were prepared to do, as it implied that they had previously misbehaved themselves.149 Hulme, 323-4. For the view that the moderates were trying to reach an accommodation with the prisoners, see L.J. Reeve, Chas. I and the Road to Personal Rule, 133-4. Not surprisingly, by December 1629 it was once more being rumoured that Coventry would shortly be replaced, this time by the archbishop of York, Samuel Harsnett^*.150 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 346.

The Personal Rule, 1629-40

Coventry somehow managed to cling to office in the wake of the 1629 session, just as he had miraculously weathered the storm that had threatened to engulf him following the end of the 1626 Parliament. One factor in his continued survival may have been his mastery of court intrigue. Clarendon regarded him as an ‘excellent wrestler’,151 Clarendon, i. 57.and he certainly cultivated friendships with those whose doctrinal opinions he sharply disagreed with. By the spring of 1633, if not sooner, Coventry employed as his chaplain the anti-Calvinist Gilbert Sheldon^† (later archbishop of Canterbury).152 CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 28, 449. For the suggestion that Sheldon entered Coventry’s service in the 1620s, see R.A. Beddard, ‘An Unpublished Memoir of Abp. Sheldon’, Bodl. Lib. Record, x. 45. In April 1630 another Arminian cleric, Christopher Potter^*, eschewed his fellow anti-Calvinist William Laud and campaigned on behalf of Coventry for the chancellorship of Oxford University.153 N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 80. This association with known Arminians, and the fact that Coventry chose as his London residence Durham House, a property which had, until recently, been the unofficial headquarters of the Arminian bishops in London, suggests that the lord keeper worked hard to counter-act the impact of the rise of Arminianism at court.

During the early 1630s Coventry’s position seemed more secure. In April 1631 the lord keeper was even appointed lord high steward of England for the trial of the 2nd earl of Castlehaven (Mervyn Tuchet^*, 12th Lord Audley). However, this period of harmony was short-lived. Coventry strongly disapproved of the king’s resolve to do without Parliament, and in May 1632 he and Secretary Coke risked incurring the king’s displeasure by pleading for a fresh assembly.154 Newsletters of the Caroline Court 1631-8 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi. 85). Undaunted by failure, he tried again in October 1633, whereupon Charles’s patience finally snapped, leading a gleeful Lord Cottington (Francis Cottington^†) to report that ‘the king hath so rattled my lord keeper that he is now the most pliable man in England, and all thoughts of parliaments are quite out of his pate’.155 Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, i. 141. However, it was his conduct during the Star Chamber trial of Henry Sherfield^‡ in February 1633 which precipitated perhaps the most serious crisis of Coventry’s career.

Sherfield, the puritan recorder of Salisbury, had deliberately destroyed a stained glass window in St Edmund’s, Salisbury which he regarded as idolatrous. After hearing the case, Coventry declared that Sherfield should apologize to the bishop and repair the window ‘in decent manner’ rather than be fined. Like his fellow puritan Sir John Coke, Coventry, who dismissed images of the deity as ‘Romish superstition’, clearly approved of Sherfield’s act of vandalism.156 State Trials ed. T.B. Howell, iii. 559, 561. However, Coventry’s indulgent attitude towards Sherfield was not shared by a majority of his fellow judges, who fined the miscreant £500 and committed him to the Fleet. It also outraged the king, and once again rumours began to circulate that Coventry would soon be replaced by Bishop Laud, who tried behind the scenes to obtain the great seal for himself, and who reportedly rounded on Coventry for his judgement in the Sherfield case, saying that ‘some clergymen had sat as high as he, and might again’.157 Newsletters of the Caroline Court, 157-8; Add. 35331, ff. 51v, 54; Add. 29974 (pt. 2), f. 210; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iv. 169; CSP Ven. 1632-6, p. 86. It was against this backdrop that Coventry, out of concern for legality, refused to affix the great seal to a pardon concerning goods confiscated from recusants. Charles was so angry that he took the great seal away from the lord keeper. Coventry was restored to office some six or eight hours later, but only after the intervention of the earl of Dorset.158 Add. 35331, f. 29 (entry misdated April 1629); William Whiteway of Dorchester: His Diary 1618-35 (Dorset Rec. Soc. xii), 131.

Coventry did not accompany the king to Scotland in May 1633, and by the time Charles returned to London more than two months later the latter’s temper had cooled. Thereafter the lord keeper’s fortunes began to improve. On becoming archbishop of Canterbury in August, Laud lost interest in securing Coventry’s dismissal, with the result that on 23 Sept. one observer remarked that the court was ‘never at such peace and amity’.159 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP13/53. By the spring of 1634 the two former enemies had become allies, united by a common hatred of the court’s Spanish faction, headed by the crypto-Catholic Lord Weston, now earl of Portland. Indeed, together they openly complained to the king that Portland, as lord treasurer, had mismanaged the sale of a royal forest.160 CSP Ven. 1632-6, pp. 220-2; 368; S.R. Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. vii. 355. For their continued alliance, see HMC Denbigh, v. 49. However, they failed in their attempt to topple Portland who, in October, protested to the king at the Council table that he had been traduced by Coventry. According to Clarendon, the lord keeper thereby received one of the greatest ‘shocks’ of his career.161 M. van C. Alexander, Charles I’s Lord Treasurer, 191; C115/106/8436; Clarendon, i. 57.

Over the summer of 1634 Coventry was deeply immersed in drawing up plans for the collection of Ship Money. Although not the architect of this levy, Coventry assured the king that the scheme was legal, and expressed joy when the judges confirmed this opinion in February 1637.162 Gardiner, vii. 357; State Trials, iii. 845. He also provided Charles with detailed advice concerning its operation, consulting historical records in person where necessary.163 CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 161-2; HMC Cowper, ii. 59; Harl. 7001, ff. 72, 75. Indeed, Laud believed that his role in ‘settling’ Ship Money was central.164 A.A.M. Gill, ‘Ship Money During the Personal Rule of Chas. I’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1990), 174. Coventry’s enthusiasm for Ship Money may have owed something to the fact that it drastically reduced the Navy’s reliance on Portland, who stood accused of starving the service of funds.165 A. Thrush, ‘Naval Finance and the Origins and Development of Ship Money’, War and Govt. in Britain, 1598-1650 ed. M.C. Fissel, 149-50. Another keen exponent of Ship Money was Ireland’s lord deputy, Viscount Wentworth (Thomas Wentworth^*, later 1st earl of Strafford). In November 1635 Coventry and Wentworth became friends after Coventry foiled a plot or ‘mischief’ directed against the lord deputy.166 Strafforde Letters, i. 478. Though necessarily absent from court for much of the time, Wentworth was highly regarded, both by the king and Archbishop Laud. His friendship, taken alongside the continued alliance with Laud and the death of Portland in March 1635, put Coventry in a stronger position than at any time since his appointment as lord keeper ten years earlier. Indeed, his influence was now such that Lord Cottington, chancellor of the Exchequer, tried to cultivate his friendship in the hope of obtaining the treasurer’s staff.167 Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 205.

Coventry undertook a major reform of Chancery in 1635, issuing a set of ordinances on 17 Nov. which, among other things, sought to ensure that plaintiffs and defendants were as brief as possible in their bills and answers.168 Add. 25232, ff. 126-35. Shortly thereafter he was laid up with gout for five weeks.169 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP15/297; Strafforde Letters, i. 517. In October 1636 he again declined to affix the great seal to a grant, despite receiving from the 3rd marquess of Hamilton [S] (James Hamilton^*, 2nd earl of Cambridge) a letter telling him that the king required him to do so. It may have been this episode to which Clarendon was referring when he later recalled that Hamilton once delivered Coventry a great blow. If so, the matter was quickly forgotten, as Coventry was eventually forced to comply.170 Coventry Docquets, 199; Clarendon, i. 57.

As president of the court, Coventry was necessarily involved in several high profile trials that took place in Star Chamber during the 1630s. Among the most notorious was the arraignment in June 1637 of William Prynne^‡, Henry Burton and John Bastwick for publicly accusing the bishops of introducing popish innovations. Coventry was shocked when Prynne demanded that the two bishops who formed part of the panel of judges should withdraw, and told Prynne that ‘if you should thus libel all the lords and reverend judges as you do the reverend prelates ... you would have none to pass sentence upon you’. A further well reported case was that of John Lilburne in February 1638. Lilburne was charged with publishing unlicensed books, but on being brought before Star Chamber he refused to take the oath promising to give a truthful answer. Despite strenuous efforts on the part of the lord keeper, Lilburne refused to relent, whereupon Coventry concluded that he was ‘a mad fellow’. Lilburne was subsequently sentenced to be whipped and pilloried.171 State Trials, iii. 718, 1321-3, 1328-9, 1341. Throughout these and other proceedings in Star Chamber there is no evidence that Coventry conducted himself improperly, or that he was concerned to frame verdicts that corresponded closely to the opinions of the king. During the trial of Sir James Bagg^‡ in June 1637, for instance, he declared that he could see no reason to disbelieve those witnesses who claimed they had been supplied with bad victuals by Bagg, even though Bagg was known to be favoured by Charles.172 Bodl., Rawl. C287, ff. 89, 90. Two months later, in another case involving Bagg, Coventry explained to Charles that he did not have the right to prejudice a private party in a court of law.173 K. Sharpe, Personal Rule of Chas. I, 663; HMC Cowper, ii. 163-4. Coventry’s sense of propriety was such that in June 1638 he absented himself from the trial of Sir Richard Wiseman, who had accused him of corruption.174 Sharpe, 678. Sharpe misdated the Wiseman case to 1639 and incorrectly described the defendant as Sir Thomas.

During the first half of 1638 Coventry was involved in negotiating a marriage between one of his daughters and Lord Cottington, a widower since 1634. From Coventry’s point of view, an alliance with Cottington would help to counterbalance the influence of William Juxon^†, bishop of London, whom the king had appointed lord treasurer in 1636.175 Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 412; Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP18/10. It may also have served as a stepping stone to greater things, for around this time it was rumoured that Coventry would soon be appointed lord chancellor.176 C115/108/8624. However, in May 1638 the negotiations were broken off, apparently because Coventry, though by now immensely wealthy, would not agree to furnish the size of dowry demanded by Cottington.177 Strafforde Letters, ii. 168; M.J. Havran, Caroline Courtier: The Life of Lord Cottington, 141. Though this was perhaps disappointing, the following year Coventry found wealthy young husbands for three of his daughters: Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper^† (later 1st earl of Shaftesbury) of Rockbourne, Hampshire;178 HP Commons, 1660-90, ii. 121; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 384. Sir John Pakington, 2nd bt., Coventry’s young ward; and Henry Frederick Thynne^‡, a younger son of the enormously wealthy Sir Thomas Thynne^‡ of Longleat, Wiltshire.179 PROB 11/182, f. 3v.

In November 1638 Coventry suffered a further attack of gout, causing him to miss seven consecutive meetings of the Privy Council.180 HMC Cowper, ii. 203; Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP10b, p. 25; PC2/49, ff. 271r-v, 275, 277, 283, 288. However he had returned to work by the beginning of January 1639, and in March he was appointed to the commission responsible for governing the kingdom during the king’s absence in the north.181 CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 288, 607-8. It was presumably because of the additional duties thereby created, rather than any decline in Coventry’s health, that in mid April the master of the rolls and the masters in Chancery were authorized to hear cases in Chancery in the lord keeper’s absence.182 Coventry Docquets, 49-50.

Following the king’s return to London that summer it was again rumoured that Coventry would soon be dismissed. The king’s difficulties with his Scottish subjects made it likely that a Parliament would soon be summoned, and it was widely assumed that if he remained in post Coventry would express more sympathy with the House of Commons than with Charles.183 CSP Ven. 1638-9, p. 571. There was certainly some basis for this belief, for later that same year the lord keeper sent Charles a message urging him to be patient with the forthcoming Parliament and to let it sit ‘without an unkind dissolution’.184 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), ii. 137.

Charles was determined to wage war on his rebellious Scottish subjects, and in December 1639 he solicited loans from the members of his Council. Coventry provided £10,000, though this was perhaps rather more than he wished, as it was subsequently reported that he offered just £6,000, ‘at which the king gave him some unkind words’. A few days later, on 18 Dec., the lord keeper fell gravely ill. The build-up of uric acid that had caused periodic and severe attacks of gout now manifested itself in the form of a stone lodged in his bladder, giving rise to recurrent and violent abdominal spasms.185 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 215-26. Coventry attended Council meetings on 15 and 17 Dec. 1639, but not on the 18th: PC2/51, ff. 87v, 91v, 94v. We are grateful to Frederick Holmes, emeritus prof. of Medicine at the Univ. of Kansas, for advice on the nature of Coventry’s final illness. Sensing that the end was near Coventry, whose mind remained clear, recommended to the king the moderate and well respected lawyer Edward Littleton^‡ as his successor.186 Sloane 3075, ff. 5v-6; Gill, 530. After enduring four weeks of torment, during which time he seemed briefly to rally, Coventry died in the early hours of the morning of 14 Jan. 1640 at Durham House.187 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 219, 221; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 340; Add. 35331, f. 75; Add. 29974, pt. 2, f. 306; Croke, 565. A post mortem examination of his remains, taken alongside the fact that he retained his mental faculties to the end, suggests that the cause of death was blood poisoning rather than uremia.188 HEHL, EL7818.

Coventry’s will, which had been drafted on 1 June 1638, was proved four days after its author’s death. In this document Coventry provided for his widow who, besides her dower lands in Suffolk and Lincolnshire, was left £1,000 in cash, a coach and six, household stuff to the value of £1,500 and the lease of the house and grounds at Canonbury. The will also set aside £500 for charitable purposes and assigned dowries of £4,000 for each of the lord keeper’s three daughters. However, during the interval between the drafting of the will and Coventry’s final illness at least two of the lord keeper’s daughters had married, while two of the men appointed to oversee the will had now died. These changed circumstances necessitated the addition of several codicils, the last of which was dated two days before Coventry’s death.189 PROB 11/182, ff. 1-4. There is evidence that Mary’s marriage to Thynne had not taken place by the time Coventry died in 1640: Longleat, Thynne Pprs. lxxvii. f. 31.

Coventry was buried alongside his parents at Croome d’Abitot, in accordance with his wishes. In view of his high office, he was granted the funeral rites normally accorded to an earl, and his hearse was accompanied to the edge of London by most of the nobility then in town.190 Coll. of Arms, I.8, f. 67. A marble monument, showing him reclining in his judicial robes alongside his regalia as lord keeper, was subsequently erected to his memory. He was succeeded in his lands and titles by his eldest son, Thomas.

Posthumous reputation

Coventry’s death was ‘much lamented’ at the time. Among those to mourn his loss was a correspondent of John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, who observed that, as a result of Coventry’s death and the enforced retirement of Sir John Coke, ‘New England ... is stripped at once of our best friends at the board’.191 Sharpe, 665, 840. However, perhaps none were sorrier at the lord keeper’s passing than the king. Despite the sometimes rocky nature of their relationship, Charles deeply admired Coventry. On appointing his successor, the king urged the new lord keeper, Lord Finch, to ‘look well to himself for his carriage in that place ... as he had an excellent pattern in his predecessor for moderation to follow’.192 HEHL, EL7817.

During the late 1640s, however, Coventry’s reputation was called into question. In a petition to the Commons in 1648, John Lilburne, who had been whipped and pilloried ten years earlier on the orders of Star Chamber, described Coventry as ‘the activest man in infringing the laws and liberties of the nation’. This view was subsequently endorsed by the nineteenth century lord chancellor John Campbell^†, 1st Lord Campbell, who claimed that Coventry was ‘unaided by principle’ and that he ‘zealously encouraged’ Charles I’s ‘arbitrary propensities’. Lilburne also alleged that Coventry had ‘got a great estate by corruption’,193 State Trials, iii. 1363; J. Campbell, Lives of the Ld. Chancellors (3rd edn.), ii. 518, 532. a charge repeated a few years later by Sir Anthony Weldon, who claimed that Coventry had ‘got such an estate by bribery and injustice that he is said to have left a family worth a million’.194 Secret Hist. of the Ct. of Jas. I ed. W. Scott, ii. 55-6. Before long, the idea took hold that Coventry’s amassing of great wealth could not have been achieved honestly.195 Campbell, ii. 558, citing Sloane 3075. More recently, a further damning charge has been laid at Coventry’s door by L.J. Reeve, who has characterized the lord keeper not as a zealot but as a ‘fellow-traveller’, unhappy at the direction of royal policy during the Personal Rule but lacking either the courage or the influence to oppose the king’s wishes.196 Reeve, 190.

These unflattering assessments of Coventry must be treated with scepticism. Coventry was lacking in neither courage nor conviction. In 1626/7 he risked his position for the sake of the principle that kings raised money from their subjects with their consent, expressed in Parliament, while in 1629 he courted the king’s displeasure by arguing for gentleness in the treatment of those who had violently disrupted the Speaker’s attempts to adjourn the House of Commons on 2 March. During the 1630s Coventry twice disobeyed the king’s instructions to seal grants with the great seal, for which offence he was briefly removed from office. None of this is consistent with the view that Coventry was a timorous time-server. Although Coventry enthusiastically supported Ship Money, this did not make him unprincipled, as personal inspection of medieval records seems genuinely to have persuaded him that the king was entitled to raise this money. As a puritan member of the Council, it is perhaps surprising that Coventry employed as his chaplain the Arminian Gilbert Sheldon and that he allied himself with Archbishop Laud from 1634. However, alliances of convenience were normal at the early Stuart court, and indeed were sometimes necessary for political survival. There is no evidence that his contemporaries thought that Coventry had thereby compromised his own religious beliefs. On the contrary, the lord keeper and his family were well known for their daily prayer devotions, a practice peculiar to many puritans. Indeed, in 1635, Henry Valentine presented to Coventry his volume of private devotions, ‘the love and exercise whereof hath advanced your lordship to public honour’.197 H. Valentine, Private Devotions (1635), sig. A3; Stowe 619, f. 53v.

Just as there is little reason to suppose that Coventry wanted either courage or principles, so too there are grounds for doubting that he was corrupt. His close association with Sir John Coke, who did his utmost to root out peculation in the Navy, argues for an essential honesty, as does the fact that, during his lifetime, only Sir Richard Wiseman ever accused him of corruption. There is certainly no evidence to suggest that he died as rich as Weldon suggested. In a document drawn up in April 1639 for the benefit of his executors, Coventry declared that he had just over £18,000 in cash in ‘the old iron chest’, and that he was owed almost £7,000 by others.198 Worcs. RO, 705:73 14450/363/6. These were large sums, to be sure, but they were no more than one might reasonably expect to have been amassed by a highly successful senior lawyer whose career spanned nearly 40 years. Although Coventry said nothing about his annual income, a fellow Inner Templar estimated one month after his death that his estate was worth about £12,000 a year.199 Winthrop Pprs. IV: 1638-44 ed. Mass. Hist. Soc. 195. Assuming it is broadly accurate, this figure too is impressive but hardly excessive.

Not until after the Restoration were the extravagant claims made by Lilburne and Weldon called into question. The royalist writer David Lloyd argued that Coventry was not only essentially honest but also motivated by ‘a passion’ for ‘the public welfare’, while an anonymous and widely circulated manuscript account of the lord keeper’s life vigorously rebutted ‘the vague objection, vulgarly inferred’, that Coventry’s wealth was obtained corruptly.200 D. Lloyd, State Worthies (1670), 980. At least seven copies of the ms life are extant: Sloane 3075; Stowe 619, ff. 548-55v; CUL, Ee.IV.17; Cheshire Archives, DAR/1/19; Worcs. RO, 705:73 BA14450/447/13; Norf. RO, Hare 6156 228 x 4; Cat. of the Mss in the I. Temple Lib. ed. J. Conway Davies, 778. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is these verdicts that are surely most credible.