No. 39.
THE LORD KEEPER COVENTRY.
By Cornelius Jansen.
BORN 1578, DIED 1640.
In robes of office.
THE founder of the family’s fortunes was one John, who, assuming the name of his native town, went to London, where he became a mercer, and, doing well in business, was elected Lord Mayor in 1425.
Thomas, a descendant of the worshipful aforesaid (a lawyer, and eventually a Judge of Common Pleas), married Margaret, daughter and heir of —— Jefferies of Croome d’Abitot, county Worcester, still the residence of the Earls of Coventry. The subject of this notice was his son and heir, educated under the eye of his father, till he was fourteen, afterwards at Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained three years, then passed to the Inner Temple, London, to study law, which he did zealously. ‘By an indefatigable diligence he attained the bar, and appeared in the lustre of his profession above the common expectations,’ according to the magniloquent phrases of the time. In 1616 he was elected Recorder of London, and in the following year Solicitor-General, and shortly afterwards he was knighted at Theobalds.
1620 saw him Attorney-General, and in 1625 Buckingham recommended him to the King, as Lord Keeper, the Duke being most anxious to oust his old enemy Bishop Williams, who then held the Seals. A letter is extant from Coventry to the Duke, in which, with many circumlocuting paragraphs, he accepts the responsible post, which it would appear he had at first declined from diffidence. ‘But after a great conflict in himself against those disabilities,’ he laid himself ‘in all humility and submission at the feet of his Sovereign, hoping that God and His Majestie would accept his true hart and willing endevor,’ etc. etc.
But although he wrote in a style that may seem to us time-serving, it should be rather attributed to the fashion of the day, since not long after he had the independence to resist the grasping ambition of the Duke, his original patron.