Thomas Coventry, 5th baron (d. 1699), was created an earl in 1697 with a special limitation, on failure of his own male issue, to that of Walter, youngest brother of the lord keeper, from whom the present earl of Coventry is descended.
[1] Spedding’s Bacon. vi. 97.
[2] Hacket’s Life of Bishop Williams, ii. 19.
[3] Rushworth (1680), part ii. vol. i. 294.
[4] Ath. Oxon. ii. 650.
[5] There is an adverse opinion also expressed in Pepys’s Diary, August 26, 1666, probably based on little real knowledge.
COVENTRY, SIR WILLIAM (c. 1628-1686), English statesman, son of the lord keeper, Thomas, Lord Coventry, by his second wife Elizabeth Aldersley, was born about 1628. He matriculated at Queen’s College, Oxford, at the age of fourteen. Owing to the outbreak of the Civil War he was obliged to quit his studies, but according to Sir John Bramston “he had a good tutor who made him a scholar, and he travelled and got the French language in good perfection.” “He was young whilst the war continued,” wrote Clarendon, “yet he had put himself before the end of it into the army and had the command of a foot company and shortly after travelled into France.” Here he remained till all hopes of obtaining foreign assistance and of raising a new army had to be laid aside, when he returned to England and kept aloof from the various royalist intrigues. When, however, a new prospect of a restoration appeared in 1660, Coventry hastened to Breda, was appointed secretary to James, duke of York, lord high admiral of England, and headed the royal procession when Charles entered London in triumph.
He was returned to the Restoration parliament of 1661 for Great Yarmouth, became commissioner for the navy in May 1662 and in 1663 was made D.C.L. at Oxford. His great talents were very soon recognized in parliament, and his influence as an official was considerable. His appointment was rather that of secretary to the admiralty than of personal assistant to the duke of York,[1] and was one of large gains. Wood states that he collected a fortune of £60,000. Accusations of corruption in his naval administration, and especially during the Dutch war, were brought against him, but there is nothing to show that he ever transgressed the limits sanctioned by usage and custom in obtaining his emoluments. Pepys in his diary invariably testifies to the excellence of his administration and to his zeal for reform and economy. His ability and energy, however, did little to avert the naval collapse, owing chiefly to financial mismanagement and to the ill-advised appointments to command. Coventry denied all responsibility for the Dutch War in 1665, which Clarendon sought to place upon his shoulders, and his repudiation is supported by Pepys; it was, moreover, contrary to his well-known political opinion. The war greatly increased his influence, and shortly after the victory off Lowestoft, on the 3rd of June 1665, he was knighted and made a privy councillor (26th of June) and was subsequently admitted to the committee on foreign affairs. In 1667 he was appointed to the board of treasury to effect financial reforms. “I perceive,” writes Pepys on the 23rd of August 1667, “Sir William Coventry is the man and nothing done till he comes,” and on his removal in 1669 the duke of Albemarle, no friendly or partial critic, declares that “nothing now would be well done.” His appointment, however, came too late to ward off the naval disaster at Chatham the same year and the national bankruptcy in 1672.