Henry Coventry (c. 1710–1752) was an English religious writer.
He was the son of Henry Coventry, younger brother of William Coventry, 5th Earl of Coventry and a landowner of Cowley, Middlesex, and his wife Ann Coles, and was born at Twickenham around 1710; the writer Francis Coventry was a cousin. He was educated at Eton College. He matriculated at Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1726, where he graduated B.A. in 1730 and became a Fellow, and M.A. in 1733.[1]
Coventry was an associate of Conyers Middleton, Horace Walpole and William Cole.[2] Cole wrote that, as an undergraduate, Coventry was a friend of Thomas Ashton, and they prayed with prisoners; but that later he was an "infidel".[3] He was a correspondent of John Byrom, who had taught him shorthand at Cambridge in 1730;[4] [5] and was on good terms with William Melmoth the younger, a contemporary at Magdalene, who called him "my very ingenious friend, Philemon to Hydaspes", and dedicated to him his first work, Of an Active and Retired Life (1735).[6] [7] He died on 29 December 1752.[2]
With Charles Bulkley and Richard Fiddes, Coventry was a prominent defender of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury.[8] He wrote Philemon to Hydaspes, relating a conversation with Hortensius upon the subject of False Religion, in five parts, 1736–37–38–41–44. After his death, it was republished in 1753 by Francis Coventry, in one volume.[2]
This work has been taken as deist;[9] and it is replete with positive references to Shaftesbury.[10] John Mackinnon Robertson listed it as a "freethinking treatise".[11] Coventry is taken to have innovated in using the term "mysticism" against fanaticism of a sectarian nature.[12] In questioning the language and "luscious images" used in devotional literature, he cited The Fire of the Altar of Anthony Horneck, and wrote of the "wild extravagances of frantic enthusiasm".[13]
Coventry incurred the displeasure of William Warburton: who accused him of plagiarism in this work. That was in relation to Warburton's Hieroglyphics;[4] also of making unfair use of information communicated in confidence, which was to be published in the second volume of The Divine Legation of Moses.[2] John Brown, a Warburton ally, implied that Henry Coventry was a slavish disciple of Shaftesbury, and Francis Coventry rebutted the allegation.[10] [14]
Coventry was one of the authors of the Athenian Letters. A pamphlet entitled Future Rewards and Punishments believed by the Antients, 1740, has been attributed to him.[2]