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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2011
More than three-quarters of a century have elapsed since the part played by Sir William Coventry (1627–1686) in the government of England under Charles II was first adjudged worthy the attention of political historians of the period. These latter can scarcely be charged with idleness in the interim; but it has been to more prominent men of his time that they have attended, and to their pages Coventry is at best a transient and rather confused visitor. It is natural to wonder why. None of his contemporaries, not even Clarendon, denied him to possess administrative ability of the first order; he occupied for some years, including the critical ones of the second Dutch war, offices of considerable importance; yet his figure remains discernible only within the penumbrae of brighter bodies.
1 By an anonymous contributor (W. D. Christie?) to the Saturday Review of 11 Oct. 1873Google Scholar; later by Foxcroft, H C. in her Life and Letters of Sir George Savile (London, 1898), vol. I.Google Scholar
2 For an interesting attempt by Coventry to refurbish commissions of Oyer and Terminer in certain naval causes see N[avy] R[ecords] S[ociety], LX (London, 1925), p. 399Google Scholar Some correspondence on admiralty jurisdiction is among his papers at Longleat (Coventry MSS. XCVI, fos 13–50, 307).
The link with Longleat was by marriage of a sister to Sir Henry Thynne, and on William's recommendation their son Henry Frederick Thynne was taken as clerk into the service of William's brother Henry, Secretary of State from 1672 to 1680 (H[istorical] M[anuscnpts] C[ommission], Dartmouth MSS. III, App. p. 114: Coventry MSS. CXIX, fo. 1). Henry's papers are also there, despite an order to place them at the disposal of his successor in office, Sir Leohne Jenkins (B[ritish] M[useum] Add. MSS. 32,095, fo. 204, 8 Dec. 1680), and the signing of a docket for their receipt.
3 Diary, 10 Sept. 1667.
4 Wood, Antony à, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, P. (London, 1813–1820), IV, p. 194.Google Scholar
5 To whom he confided his view of Clarendon: ‘that while he was so great at the Council board and in the administration of matters, there was no room for any body to propose any remedy to what was amiss, or to compass any thing, though never so good, for the kingdom, unless approved of by the Chancellor’ (Diary, 2 Sept. 1667). But Coventry seems to have had misgivings also about the adequacy of the Privy Council itself as an organ of departmental control, especially of Treasury and Exchequer business.
6 Clarke, J. S., James II (London, 1816), I, p. 433.Google Scholar
7 Burnet, G., History [of his Own Time], ed. Airy, O. (Oxford, 1897), I, p. 479 n.Google Scholar
8 Pepys, Diary, 6 July 1666.
9 W. D Christie, Shaftesbury, I, p. 283.
10 ‘The Duke and Mr Coventry, for aught I see, being the only two that do anything like men’ (Pepys, Diary, 3 June 1664)
11 W A. Shaw, Cal[endar of] Treas[ury] B[ooks], xhv ‘I perceive Sir Wm Coventry is the man’, wrote Pepys, ‘and nothing done till he comes’ (Diary, 23 Aug 1667).
12 Coventry's project for limiting naval expenditure within £200,000 p a. (Coventry MSS. CI, fos 184 ff.) did not receive official adoption until March 1669, after its author's fall from power, and was doomed to walk the pages of Pepys' Naval Correspondence like a ghost from the end of the second Dutch war to the end of the third.
13 E g Burnet, History, I, pp 478–9 and n; II, p. 89; and Sir Temple, W., Memoirs, ed Courtenay, T. P. (London, 1836), II, p. 27.Google Scholar
14 Continuation [of the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon], 3 vols, 1827, II, pp 326Google Scholar, 350; III, pp. 11, 30–2 Support of the bill of indulgence of 1663, and of the inclusion of Downing's proviso in the supply bill of October 1665, were characteristic acts of opposition to the Chancellor Clarendon's more splenetic passages about Coventry are ibid II, pp. 202–4, 460–1, and stand in marked contrast to his picture of William's father, the Lord Keeper (History of the Rebellion (1816 edn.), I, pp. 82, 187).Google Scholar
15 ‘The chief actor in this affair was Sir William Coventry…. Of all that Lord's enemies he was the most dangerous, as having the best parts, nor could the faction perhaps have prevailed had he not been at the head of it' (J. S. Clarke, op. cit. I, pp. 430–1).
16 Hume, D., History of England (London, 1770), end of ch. LXII.Google Scholar
17 Continuation, II, p. 201.
18 Nicholas Papers (Camden Society), I, pp. 208, 211, 225, 297, 304.
19 S.P. Clar[endon], III, p. 77, 2 June 1652: see also Nicholas Papers, I, p. 309, 9/19 Sept., to Hyde.
20 Nicholas Papers, I, pp. 154–5, 4/14 Dec. 1649. The enclosure (B.M. Add. MSS. 4180, fo. 116) is endorsed by Nicholas, ‘proposition for a Council to be settled in England made by G(ilbert) T(albot) and W.C.’ The proposal is for a body of a few sober, discreet royalists in England to consider the possibilities of limited cooperation with the Presbyterians and to serve as a rallying point of action there, in regular contact with the exiles. Nominees are Richmond, Hertford and Southampton, with Nicholas as secretary. Coventry would ‘make a journey and move the king in private’ to write to each nobleman individually and in code. The members of this knot in England would then confer regularly among themselves, or, if this were too conspicuous, through delegates.
21 Cal[endar of] S[tate] P[apers] Dom[estic], 1652, 16 April
22 Cal S P Clar III, p 5, S P Thurloe, IV, p 598, Grey, A, Debates [of the House of Commons] (London, 1763), VI, p 192.Google Scholar
23 Cal. S P Clar IV, pp 593 ff 9 March 1660, Lady Willoughby to Henrietta of Orleans, 16 March Warwick to Hyde, 17/27 March Hyde to Lady Willoughby; also ibid pp 29, 30 Warwick to Charles
24 Bod[leian], Rawlinson MSS A. 26, fo 386
25 Continuation, II, p 303
26 E g William's biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography says that ‘it was mainly owing to his influence that war had been declared with the Dutch in 1663 (sic)’, Ogg, D (England in the Reign of Charles II (Oxford, 1934), I, pp 283Google Scholar, 308) calls him a leader of ‘the war party’, and one ‘who had been most forward in precipitating the war’, likewise Lodge, R (Political History of England (London, 1910), VIII, p 71)Google Scholar writes that ‘It was easy for Coventry and Arlington, who acted together in this matter, to induce parliament to listen to the urgent demands of the merchants that their grievances should be redressed’.
27 Cal SP Colonial, America and W Indies 1661–8, p 647.
28 B.M. Add. MSS. 32,094, fos. 48, 24, the latter being Clifford's letter to Coventry describing the proceedings on this celebrated occasion. It seems that Clarendon repeatedly exaggerates the closeness of Coventry to Arlington (Continuation, II, p. 341; III, p. 1).
29 B.M. Add. MSS. 32,094, fo. 17.
30 Ibid. fos. 28, 48.
32 Continuation, III, p. 306.
33 Coventry MSS. CII, fo. 13, beginning ‘The business of the Navy, the government of it, and the management of the expenses of it’, written for the Duke of York, probably between 1669 and the beginning of the third Dutch war.
33 ‘being then much steered by Sir Richd. Forde, Capt. George Cocke and Sir Wm. Rider of the merchants; and by Sir G. Carteret and Mr Gray of the Court party, as they called it, the first Carteret (though underhand) governing the merchants by the dependence they had on him for trade and payment in the Navy, the latter Mr Gray steered by the merchant party without perceiving it (being zealous for the Company) and partly out of a desire to maintain a popularity with the merchants as well as Court party, that so he might be chosen the next year sub-governor, of which he was ambitious, partly having nothing else to do and partly for the opportunity it gave him to make his court to his Royal Highness’. Captain Holmes' instructions were, says Coventry, ‘drawn according to the dictates of the Royal Company, myself having drawn them by notes received from Sir Richd. Forde (being so commanded)’, and ‘though pretty bold’ were exceeded even before the English ships of war reached the Gold Coast ‘where it was intended by the Coy. the game should begin’ (ibid. fo. 7).
It appears that Rider had recently been making attempts to secure direct representation of the merchant interest on the Navy Board; but Coventry urged Arlington (Cal. S.P. Dom., 1664–5, 16 Nov.) to ‘assure the King that if he once admit a merchant to sit as Navy Commissioner, the reputation of that office is lost, and the Exchequer charged deeper than if he had given an order for £40,000’, adding that he himself ‘has seen so much of merchants in the Royal Company as to be sure that if they get into the Navy, they will share all bargains’.
35 ‘The truth is, this vigour of his Royal Highness broke the measures of those ministers who would otherwise have preserved the peace at any rate’ (Coventry MSS. CII, fo. 7). This paragraph concludes: ‘The use I would make of this discourse is, that the Dutch are not to be trampled on, if you do they will kick. Their trade is their God, if you depress that by any force they will venture all for it, and therefore when you apply force to protect your trade or oppress theirs, prepare for a war.’
35 Continuation, II, pp. 328–30.
36 E.g. when he states that the appointment of additional Navy Commissioners, beside the treasurer, comptroller, surveyor and clerk, ‘was a thing never heard of before…. In the time of an admiral commissioners have not been heard of’ (ibid, II, p. 331) but arose merely from Coventry's desire to diminish the power of the treasurer and not from the huge increase in naval business. Clarendon then proceeds to misname the Commissioners.
37 Such as Wood, Anthony à, Life and Times, ed. Clark, A. (Oxford, 1891), III, p 190Google Scholar: ‘He got what he pleased when Secretary got threescore thousand pounds’; also Sir John Denham, Directions to a Painter.
38 House of Commons Journals, 1663, pp 471, 474, 483, 486, 496, the bill was lost in committee Pepys, Diary, 2 June 1662, 12 Oct. 1663 On this second occasion Sir Thomas Tomkins (‘that makes many mad motions’) proffered information supplied by two aggrieved persons whom Coventry privately identified as ‘rogues that for their roguery have been turned out of their places’.
39 Ibid. 12 Oct 1663: ‘The Duke's answer was, that he wished we all had made more profit than we had of our places, and that we had all of us got as much as one man below stairs in the Court, whom he named’
40 Ibid 4 Oct. 1666. It is to this occasion that Sir John Holland (M P. for Aldeburgh) evidently refers in a later, but undated, speech among his papers (Tanner MSS. 239, fo 47), according to which Coventry confessed ‘with much frankness and ingenuity and with that reason, that the House seemed to m e to be so well satisfied as to give him a tacit approbation, for there was not any one person that took the least exception to him therein’.
41 Pepys, Diary, 28 Oct. 1667.
42 Grey, Debates, I, p. 92; Pepys, Diary, 23 Feb. 1667/8; Coventry MSS. CI, fo. 218.
43 Coventry MSS. CI, fos. 225–40: phrases of the speech are taken from these pages unless otherwise identified. Copies of the petition are ibid, at fos. 107, 110 and 121, a fourth copy is among Pepys' papers in Rawlinson MSS. A. 195, fo. 74, and a fifth, which does not mention Coventry, is listed in Cal. S.P. Dom. 1667(?), p. 134. None is dated.
44 A violent and boastful one, which made him a thorn in the side of the Navy Office, ‘when, God knows!’, exclaimed Pepys, ‘he is as idle and insignificant a fellow as ever came into the fleet’ (Diary, 18 Feb. 1667/8). As captain of the Cambridge Holles had lost an arm in the Four Days Fight of June 1665, and after his ship was laid up in the spring of 1667 was placed in command of fireships in the Thames (Coventry MSS. XCVII, fos. 75, 85), where he and his men made a nuisance of themselves by their unruliness (Diary, 14, 17, 25 June 1667).
45 One of the exceptional cases had unfortunately involved Holles, over whose protest Brouncker, a Commissioner acting without authority of the Navy Office, had improperly discharged the Cambridge's officers, as well as her men, by ticket at Chatham in October 1666. (Rawlinson MSS. A. 191, fo. 229, ‘Notes for evidence before Committee of Miscarriages’, 13 Feb. 1667/8).
46 ‘My own notes of the manner of my first knowing the endeavours to get subscriptions against me’, Coventry MSS. CI, fos. 157–8.
47 Gilbert Cornelius (formerly lieutenant of the Good Hope) and Samuel Waterton (late purser of the Guernsey), introduced to Coventry by Capt. Thomas Beckford the slopseller and Edward Gregory Jr. (presumably the Gregory with whom Pepys had regular business over the Chatham Chest, and the son of his ‘old friend’).
48 Ibid. fos. 104–221, upon which the succeeding paragraphs are based.
49 Under the Commonwealth Tatnall had commanded successively the Rosebush, Fortune and Adventure ([Public Record Office] Adm[iralty] 7/549), all fourth-rates, but was deprived of his command in September 1660 after examination on the complaint of his officers (Navy Board In-letters, Adm. 106/1, fo. 370, 106/2, fo. 3). Appointed a pressmaster in 1665 (Adm. 106/10, fo. 477) he defrauded the widow of his partner of the latter's wages, for which he was dismissed and imprisoned, Coventry refusing to protect him (Coventry MSS CI, fos. III, 214). Coventry notes him as ‘with all his relations most violent against H M (by the oath of abjuration) and his friends’ (ibid XCVIII, fo 68) Pepys, whom Tatnall had threatened about the prize money, called him ‘a very rogue’ (Diary, 1668, 8 March, 3 April). His accomplices were· (1) William Dixon, midshipman, later mate of the Antelope, commanded by Holles, and discharged 8 October 1665. In April 1666 Sir Jeremy Smith put him in, on Holles' recommendation, as master gunner of the Dragon for his voyage to the Straits, but he was discharged for refusing gun-wadding from the Ordnance, ‘because it is not so fit for his embezzlement as that which hath heretofore been delivered’, in the following month Reinstated by Rupert and Albemarle in July 1666, he was again dismissed for neglect of duty in April 1667. (Adm 106/13, fo. 123, Coventry MSS XCIX, fos 33–5). (2) John Broderidge (or Broadridge), late bo'sun of the Dragon, whose misdemeanours and neglect of duty are attested in detail by his captain (ibid fo 290). (3) Edward Hill, late bo'sun of the Constant Warwick, aggrieved by discharge without pension after losing an arm in service (ibid CI, fo 219).
50 No speech by Coventry on 29 April is recorded, but it is doubtful whether this would be taken in public business Holland's supporting speech is undated. Presumption in favour of 29 April is however strengthened by Mr G. Montague's report to Pepys (see Diary) at Westminster Hall the same afternoon ‘that Sir Wm Coventry do take, and will secure himself’, and by the rapid disintegration of the plot and falling-out among the conspirators recorded in Coventry's informations from 30 April onward.
51 5 & 6 Edw. VI, c. 16 (Statutes of the Realm, IV, pp. 151–2), ‘An Act against buying and selling of Offices’ (which forbade any man to ‘bargain or sell’ or ‘take any money, fee, reward or profit’ for ‘any office concerning the administration of Justice, or the receipt or control of the King's revenue or the keeping etc., of any Town, Castle or Fortress, or any clerkship in any court of record’ or in surveying the king's land). The statute seems to have been a dead letter for many years before the revival of interest in it in 1663.
52 Coventry MSS. XCVI, fos. 16, 17, 20; XCVIII, fos. 103, 104, 109; CI, fo. 243. The form of affidavit is exemplified by XCVI, fo. 16, sworn by H. Holt, 31 October 1663, that upon examination of his books he found: ‘1. I was Purser of the Mary Rose in April 1638 and continued for 7 or 8 years. 2. Under Northumberland and Mr Smith. 3. I paid the said Mr Smith for the removal of my brother Will. Holt out of the Mary Rose and myself into it, for both £60, and to his clerk Robt. Sewell £3. 4. It was the practice and general custom in those days for all officers in the Navy at their receiving their warrants from the Ld. Admiral's secretary to pay him for the same great sums of money, and few or none came in upon cheap terms.’ Sometimes the applicant would buy the place directly from his predecessor, giving the Secretary or his clerk a much smaller fee. That the clerk continued to receive small set sums for his pains in drawing up the warrant, even after gratuities had been abolished to the Secretary himself, appears from a scale of fees among Pepys' papers (Rawlinson MSS. A. 171, fo. 137), which certainly cannot refer to the Secretaryship. Pepys, with Coventry's example before him, never risked burning his fingers.
53 Adm. 106/4, fo. 45, copy in Coventry MSS. XCVIII, fo. 78.
54 Ibid. fo. 80. The scale suggested by the Board is, for the place of bo'sun, gunner or purser of first, second and third rates £30, of fourth, fifth and sixth rates £20, £10 and £5 respectively; for the place of carpenter or cook, two-thirds and one-half respectively of the former sums.
55 Coventry MSS. CI, fos. 218, 238, tabulating information supplied him by Penn in a letter of 26 Feb. 1667/8, Ibid., XCVI, fo. 284.
56 Ibid., XCVIII, fos. 119–21.
57 Cal. S.P. Dom., 1664, p. 26. A draft in Coventry's hand (Coventry MSS. XCVIII, fo. 128) is marked ‘sent to Mr Sherman to draw a Privy Seal by’. That this did not abolish all the Secretary's fees appears from a controversy which arose in May 1682 when Holles and Finch (an Admiralty Commissioner) objected to the practice of Brisbane, then Secretary to the Commission, in charging 25s. apiece for passes to merchants. ‘However the King, who was well prepared in this matter, said that the £500 p.a. [allowed to Coventry] was not to extinguish all fees, but only for commissions and the like, and in conclusion ‘twas ordered 20s. per pass’ (H.M.C., Finch MSS., II, p. 174). When sold through embassies abroad, however, such passes fetched £10 and more apiece from foreign merchants (Coventry MSS. XCVI, fos. 154, 164, W. Temple to Coventry).
58 ‘A list of officers put into the Navy gratis’ (Ibid., CI, fo. 241, undated), containing 287 names and their offices, is presumably an expanded version of the list he earlier showed to Pepys and the Duke of York (Diary, 1663, 21 June, 12 Oct.).
59 ‘Reasons against sending Commanders to sea who have not used the sea’ (B.M. Add. MSS. 32,094, fos. 43–5).
60 Coventry MSS. XCV, fo. 157: ‘Notes taken out of Ld. Sandwich's journal with intent to reflect on me’.
61 E.g. Adm. 106/6, fo. 337, Coventry to Navy Board, 13 March 1661/2: ‘I desire that as often as any persons of ability and good affection, fit for those places offer themselves to you, that you would please to give them your certificates specifying for what rate of ships you judge them fit, which when I have received I will keep a list of them until vacancies offer themselves.’ Cp. Ibid.. 106/1, fo. 342; 106/5, fo. 341. 106/6, fo. 240.
62 Coventry MSS. CI, fo. 219. The only petitioners whose names are identifiable in current Navy lists—nine in number—were appointed to office during the twelvemonth following the Restoration.
63 For independent evidence of place-selling in the early Stuart navy see letters of Sir Thomas Smith (a predecessor in the Secretaryship under Northumberland), S.P. Dom., Car. I, CCCXCVIII, no. 15, 4 Sept. 1638 and to Sir John Pennington, CCCCXLII, no. 33, 17 Jan. 1639/40. The latter is of particular interest as being Smith's defence of his conduct under accusation. For the practice during the Long Parliament see the case of Giles Greene, chairman of the Navy Committee, in 1647 (N.R.S. VII (London, 1896)Google Scholar, Hollond's Discourses, Introd. lxvi).
64 A beginning of reform was made in the Office of Ordnance in 1665; but an attempt of July 1660 to introduce a fixed stipend for the Navy Treasurer in lieu of fees was not permanently effectual for another ten years.
65 See the answer of the Commissioners of Customs (23 July 1694) to a rebuke from the Treasury about sale of offices within their service (Cal. Treas. B., 1557–1696, XLVII and XXVIII, no. 78). The Navy Commissioners were under attack again in 1701, by Robert Crosfield (Corrupt Ministers, the Cause of Public Calamities); and in 1703 another abortive bill against the practice was being considered by parliament (H.M.C. House of Lords MSS., n.s. VI, p. 36, 6 Dec. 1703).
68 Besides noting as a cause of his prosecution ‘my not joining to cast over Clarendonians and bring in anti-Clarendomans', Coventry declared to Pepys (Diary, 3 Dec 1667) ‘his mind to be ruled by his own measures, and not to go so far as many would have him to the ruin of my Lord Chancellor, and for which they do endeavour to do what they can against Sir Wm. Coventry. But, says he, I have done my do in helping to get him out of the administration of things, for which he is not fit; but as for his life or estate I will have nothing to say to it: besides that my duty to my master the Duke of York is such, that I will perish before I do anything to displease or disoblige him, where the very necessity of the kingdom do not in my judgement call me’. Other reporters confirm that this fidelity to James ‘gives jealousy to the violent party, most prevalent now and looked upon more meritorious for their pursuing my Lord Clarendon’ (Ossory to Ormonde, 4 Jan. 1667/8, Bodleian, Carte MSS. 220, fo 326).
67 E. I. Carlyle in English Historical Review, XXVII, p. 251.
68 Temple says that Coventry's removal was in order ‘to make way for my Lord Clifford's greatness and the designs of the cabal’ (Works, ed. Courtenay, T. P.(London, 1720), II, p 27)Google Scholar; James, that Buckingham and Arlington ‘though much inferior to him in qualifications, were much better courtiers than he, and joining together, they prevailed to get him out of all his employments’ (J S Clarke, op cit I, p 433) Burnet writes of him at this point ‘He was in a fair way to be the chief minister, and deserved it more than all the rest did But he was too honest to engage in the designs into which the court was resolved to go, as soon as it had recovered a little reputation’, and though high office was subsequently put in his way, ‘he would never engage again He saw what was at bottom, and was resolved not to go through with it’ (History, I, p 479) Charles himself wrote to his sister, Henrietta of Orleans, on 7 March 1668/9 ‘I am not sorry that Sir Wm Coventry has given me this occasion to turn him out of the Council I do intend to turn him out of the Treasury also The truth is, he hath been a troublesome man in both places and I am well rid of him’ (quoted in Cartwnght, J[Mrs Ady, Henry], Madame (London, 1894), p 283)Google Scholar The trouble that Coventry was likely to make may be measured by the satisfaction of the French ambassador at his fall, and the promises of support from Louis himself to those who displaced him (in several letters of Colbert to Lionne, February and March 1668/9 under Correspondance Angleterre in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
69 Diary, 30 Oct 1662