styled 1702-10 Visct. Deerhurst; suc. fa. 20 Aug. 1710 (a minor) as 3rd earl of COVENTRY.
Never sat.
b. 7 Apr. 1702, s. of Thomas Coventry, 2nd earl of Coventry, and Anne, da. of Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort. educ. Eton 1710-12. unm. d. 28 Jan. 1712; admon. 14 Feb. 1712 to mother.1
Associated with: Croome d’Abitot, Worcs. and Snitterfield, Warws.
Likenesses: oil on canvas, aft. Sir G. Kneller?, c. 1710,National Trust, Antony, Cornw.; mezzotint by John Simon aft. Sir G. Kneller, NPG D31413.
‘A pretty sweet youth’, Coventry succeeded his father in the peerage at the age of eight.2 During his life, control of the estate, and therefore presumably any concomitant political influence, was left in the hands of his mother. In February 1711 a bill of complaint was entered in chancery on Coventry’s behalf by his uncle Lord Arthur Somerset, drawing attention to the dowager countess’s failure to provide the young earl with a suitable maintenance. The dowager answered the bill with a request that the court might oversee the payment of a proper allowance for her son to be raised from the real estate, claiming that Lord Arthur’s computation of the money available from both real and personal estate was exaggerated.3 Coventry died the following year at Eton and was succeeded by his uncle Gilbert Coventry, as 4th earl of Coventry.
R.D.E.E.