to a nephew, Thomas Thynne (preserved at Longleat), Coventry denied the authorship, although he admitted himself to be a Trimmer, a title which he defines as 'one who would sit upright and not overturn the boat by swaying too much on either side.' But the contrary statement in the book itself discredits Macaulay's statement that Halifax. The work appeared in Halifax's Miscellanies (1704), and was reprinted separately in 1833.
Coventry also printed England's Appeal from the Private Cabal at White-hall to the Great Council of the Nation, the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, by a True Lover of his Country, anno 1673; and A Letter Written to Dr. Burnet, giving an Account of Cardinal Pool's [i.e. Pole's] Secret Papers, 1685—a reprint of some letters by Pole, found by Coventry, and correcting some statements in Burnet's History of the Reformation.
Many of his papers are among the Ashburnham MSS. and Longleat MSS., among the latter being a catalogue of his own and his brother Henry's libraries, which were sold 9 May 1687. Coventry told Pepys that he invariably kept a journal.
[Pepys's Diary, passim; Evelyn's Diary; Burnet's own Time; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), iv. 190; Macaulay's Hist. i. 244; Clarendon's Autobiography; Clarendon State Papers; Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep. iv. v. vi.; Christie's Shaftesbury, i. 21.]
COVERDALE, MILES (1488–1568), translator of the Bible, was born in 1488, ‘patria Eboracensis,’ says his friend and contemporary Bale (Scriptores, 1557–9, p. 721), and Whitaker assumes the surname to have been taken from the district of his birth, Cover-dale, in what is called Richmondshire, in the North Riding (History of Richmondshire, i. 16, 107). A William Coverdale, ‘granator’ of Richmondshire, is mentioned in Brewer's ‘Letters and Papers of Henry VIII,’ 1529 (iv. pt. iii. p. 2359). Coverdale was from his childhood given to learning (J. Vowell alias Hooker, Catalog of the Bishops of Excester, 1584). He studied philosophy and theology at Cambridge, was admitted to priest's orders at Norwich in 1514 by John, bishop of Chalcedon, and entered the convent of Austin friars at Cambridge (Tanner, Bibliotheca, 203), where he fell under the influence of Robert Barnes [q. v.], who became prior about 1523. He was a visitor at Sir Thomas More's house, and made the acquaintance of Thomas Cromwell [q. v.], afterwards a powerful friend. An undated letter to Cromwell ‘from the Augustin's this May-day,’ but prior at least to 1527, says Mr. Gairdner, shows his religious inclinations at that period. In it he states that he begins now to taste of holy scriptures, but requires books to help him to a knowledge of the doctors. He desires nothing but books, and will be guided by Cromwell as to his conduct and in the instruction of others (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, v. 106, given in full in State Papers, Henry VIII, 1830, i. 383–4). In another letter to Cromwell, dated 27 Aug. 1527, he says he would be delighted to come to London if he knew that his correspondent wished it (Remains, 1846, pp. 491–2). He was among those who attended the meetings at the White Horse, near St. John's, called ‘Germany,’ says Foxe (Acts and Monuments, 1684, ii. 436), because of the Lutheran opinions held there. Barnes was arrested on a charge of heresy, and sent to London for examination in February 1526. Coverdale escaped a personal accusation, and went to London to help Barnes to draw up his defence when in the Fleet. About this time Coverdale left the convent to give himself entirely to evangelical preaching, and assumed the habit of a secular priest. Early in 1528 he was at Steeple-Bumpstead, where Richard Foxe was minister, preaching against confession and the worshipping of images (ib. ii. 267). In 1531 he took the degree of bachelor of the canon law at Cambridge (Cooper, Athenæ, i. 268), and three years later brought out his first books: ‘Ye Olde God and the Newe,’ and ‘Paraphrase upon the Psalmes,’ both translations. Foxe says that Coverdale was with Tyndale at Hamburg in 1529, and assisted him in the translation of the Pentateuch (ii. 303); but there is no confirmatory evidence of the latter statement. The biographers have been unable to account for his movements between 1528 and 1535, but agree that most of the time was passed abroad.
On 19 Dec. 1534 convocation resolved to petition the king for an English translation of the Bible, and Strype says that Cranmer (Life, i. 34, 38) made an endeavour to bring about the design by co-operation. The want was, however, supplied by a foreign publisher, who issued a folio volume, dated 1535, with the title: ‘Biblia. The Bible, that is the Holy Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and truly translated out of Douche and Latyn into Englishe.’ The dedication to Henry VIII is signed ‘Myles Couerdale,’ who submits his ‘poore translacyon unto the spirite of trueth in your grace.’ Some copies omit the words ‘out of Douche and Latyn’ from the intitulation, and have the title and the preliminary matter in an English type. Possibly this was the form in which the book was first issued in
