John Coventry (Weymouth MP)
English politician
Sir John Coventry (c. 1636–1685) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1667 and 1682.
Coventry was son of John Coventry (died 1652), the second son of lord keeper Thomas Coventry of Croome Park, Worcestershire. Between 1655 and 1659, he travelled on the continent with his tutor the poet Edward Sherburne. He matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford in 1660 and was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles II, the following year.
In 1667, he went with his uncle Henry Coventry to the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda, ending the Second Anglo-Dutch War. That year and in the following parliaments of 1678, 1679 and 1681, he was elected for Weymouth. He followed Lord Ashley in politics, and was a fairly active member.
On 21 December 1670, owing to a jest made by Coventry in the House of Commons on the subject of the King's amours, Sir Thomas Sandys, an officer of the guards, with other accomplices, by the order of Monmouth, and (it was said) with the approval of the king himself, waylaid him as he was returning home to Suffolk Street and slit his nose to the bone. The outrage created an extraordinary sensation in the Commons, and in consequence Parliament debated a bill "to prevent malicious maiming and wounding" (22 & 23 Chas.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6227352. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1636, 1685, 1667 and 1682.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Coventry (Weymouth MP)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.