438 COVENTRY COVERDALE and a great number of charitable foundations. St. Mary's halJ, a venerable building of the 15th century, with a principal room 63 ft. long, 30 ft. wide, and 34 ft. high, has a curiously carved roof, and a large painted window. It was built for the Trinity guild, but is now used for public celebrations, meetings, &c. The manufactures of Coventry were early cele- brated. At the commencement of the 15th century an active trade was carried on here in woollen cloths, caps, and bonnets, and there were flourishing manufactures of caps, wool- lens, and broadcloth. Afterward blue thread, called " Coventry true blue," and still later tammies, camlets, shalloons, and calliman- coes, were staple manufactures; but the ar- 8t. Michael's Church, Coventry. tides now most largely made are silks, rib- bons, fringes, and especially watches, the last more extensively than even in London. The city is connected with the grand trunk naviga- tion by the Coventry and Oxford canal, and with the chief emporiums of the kingdom by the Great Northwestern and two branch railways. Coventry was anciently defended by walls and towers, but only a small portion of the former and three of the latter remain ; the rest were destroyed by Charles II. on account of the fa- vor shown by the citizens to the parliamen- tarians. Twelve parliaments have been held here, the most noted of which are one in 1404, called the parliamentum indoctum, because lawyers were excluded from it, and one in 1459, called the parliamentum dialolicum, from its numerous acts of attainder. The peo- ple were noted for their love of all kinds of shows, pageants, and processions, descriptions of which have furnished matter for several curious and interesting works. The religious dramas called mysteries were performed here with peculiar magnificence as early as 1416, and often in the presence of royalty. Until within the present century an annual pageant was kept up in memory of the lady Godiva, but it is now only occasionally celebrated. She is said to have obtained from her husband Leofricthe remission of certain heavy imposts of which the citizens complained, on condition that she should ride naked through the streets of Cov- entry at noonday. She ordered the people to keep within doors and close their shutters, and, veiled only by her long flowing hair, she mounted her palfrey and rode through the town, unseen except by an inquisitive tailor, immortalized under the sobriquet of " peeping Tom," whose curiosity was punished by instant blindness. This story, on which Tennyson has founded a poem, was first recorded by Matthew of Westminster, who wrote in 1307, 250 years after its supposed occurrence. On the occasion of the pageant's taking place, a very lightly clad female is still the leading character. Efforts have been made to sup- press this exhibition, but with only partial suc- cess. The phrase " sending to Coventry " is supposed to have originated with military men, from whom the inhabitants held them- selves aloof. COVENTRY, a town of Kent county, Rhode Island, on a branch of the Pawtuxet river, and the Hartford, Providence, and Fishkill railroad, 12 m. S. W. of Providence; pop. in 1870, 4,349. It is noted for its manufactories of mousseline-de-laines, calico prints, coarse cotton goods, and cotton and other machinery. COVERDALE, Miles, an English divine, born in Yorkshire in 1487, died in February, 1568. He was educated in the house of the Augustine friars at Cambridge, ordained a priest in 1514, and was among the first at Cambridge to renounce allegiance to the church of Rome. Finding continued residence in England unsafe, he went abroad, and assisted Tyndale in his translation of the Bible. In 1535 he published a translation of his own, with a dedication to King Henry VIII. This was the earliest Eng- lish translation of the whole Bible. No per- fect copy of this edition is now known to exist, but the version of the Psalms is that still used in the u Book of Common Prayer " of the Epis- copal church. In 1538 he went to Paris to superintend the publication of a new edition ; but before the completion of the undertaking it was denounced by the inquisition, and the 2,500 copies already finished were condemned to the flames. A few copies, however, were sold as waste paper, and so preserved. These, with presses, types, and printers, were shortly after transported to England, and used in
