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John Coventry may refer to:

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Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Sir John Coventry 1636-1685, MP for Weymouth's Parliamentary biography is at
https://www.historyofparliamenton…

Pepys is correct: William and Henry Coventry's sister was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley's first wife, Margaret. She died 11 July, 1649.

This Sir John Coventry was the son of Sir John Coventry Snr. who died shortly after helping Charles II escape from Worcester. His mother had also died when he was young, and he was sent abroad for education.

The relevant part of Sir John's Parliamentary bio is:
"Their [the Somerset commissioners] suspicions were well-founded, for in his will dated 7 Apr. 1667 he [impoverished Cavalier tutor, Edward Sherburne] declared himself ‘a true son of the Church of Rome, and so have been several years’. Nevertheless [the Commissioners] were prepared to discharge the estate (valued at £3,000 p.a.) if he [orphan Sir John Coventry Jr.] were ‘taken into the tuition of some honest and well-affected person’.

"Sir John Coventry Jr. accordingly became the ward of his uncle Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, whose politics he followed, and in 1662 he was described as ‘loyal and orthodox; a very hopeful man’.

"At the Weymouth by-election of 1667, the full weight of the court interest was put behind him. His former guardian, now chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to the corporation in his support and Bullen Reymes MP used his influence with the mayor (whose mother was his business partner) while Sir Roger Cuttance, flag captain to Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, accused his opponents of provoking disorder.

"On the other side, the canvassers ‘did not say Sir John Coventry will swear a thousand oaths in an hour, or rant, or be drunk, and that he is a courtier’; but the electorate were left to draw their own conclusions from these careful negatives."

No mention of a trip to The Hague with his uncle Henry, but it is quite possible since Sir John Coventry was presumably fluent in European languages.

I wonder if he was chosen to take the documents to Charles II because he was a swearing. badly-behaved drunk and they wanted to get him The Hague?

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"they wanted to get him out of The Hague," Sorry

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1667

1668