Henry Coventry

Henry Coventry (1619-1686) was an English politician, who was Secretary of State for the Northern Department between 1672 and 1674 and the Southern Department between 1674 and 1680.

Origins and education

Coventry was the third son by the second marriage of Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, brother of Sir William Coventry, uncle of Sir John Coventry, and brother-in-law of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. After studying at All Souls College, Oxford, he graduated in both arts and law.

Career

In the civil wars he adhered to the king's party, and accompanied Charles II in his exile, during part of which time he was employed as royalist agent in Germany and Denmark, in company with Lord Wentworth, until the concert was dissolved by a violent quarrel, leading apparently to a duel. The notices of him at this date are very confused; Henry, his elder brother Francis, and his younger brother William being all attached to the exiled court and all commonly spoken of as Mr. Coventry. Before the Restoration Francis had ceased to take any active part in public affairs, and William had devoted himself more especially to the service of the Duke of York, whose secretary he continued to be while the duke held the office of Lord High Admiral. In 1661, Henry became MP for Droitwich. He remained in the service of the crown, and in September 1664 was sent as ambassador to Sweden, where he remained for the next two years, “accustoming himself to the northern ways of entertainment, and this grew upon him with age”. In 1667 he was sent, jointly with Lord Holles, as plenipotentiary to negotiate the treaty of peace with the Dutch, which, after the disgraceful summer, was finally concluded at Breda. In 1671 he was again sent on an embassy to Sweden, and in 1672 he was appointed Secretary of State for the Northern Department, transferring to the Southern Department in 1674. In this office he continued till 1680, when his health, which was shattered by frequent attacks of gout, compelled him to retire from public life.

Reputation

According to Gilbert Burnet, “he was a man of wit and heat, of spirit and candour. He never gave bad advices; but when the king followed the ill advices which others gave, he thought himself bound to excuse if not to justify them. For this the Duke of York commended him much. He said in that he was a pattern to all good subjects, since he defended all the king's counsels in public, even when he had blamed them most in private with the king himself”. It is to his credit that after holding public office for nearly twenty years he had not accumulated any large fortune; and though no doubt in easy circumstances, he wrote of himself as feeling straitened by the loss of his official salary on 31 December 1680. He died in London on 7 December 1686. He was never married. Writing to Sir Robert Carr on 12 September 1676, and regretting his inability to fulfil some promise relative to a vacant post, he said: “Promises are like marriages; what we tie with our tongues we cannot untie with our teeth. I have been discreet enough as to the last, but frequently a fool as to the first.”

References

*DNB