The Coventry Act was passed to prevent malicious maiming and wounding in 1671, in consequence of Sir John Coventry being maimed in the streets of London by Sir Thomas Sandy's and others on 21st December 1670. Under the act, it became a capital offence to lie in wait with intent to disfigure someone's nose. The act was repealed in 1828. Research Coventry Act
Sir Edward Coke was an English judge. He was born in 1552 and died in 1634. He was known as the greatest common lawyer of all time. The son of a Norfolkshire gentleman, after finishing his education at Cambridge he went to London, and entered the Inner Temple. His reputation and practice rapidly increased. He was chosen recorder of the cities of Norwich and of Coventry, knight of the shire for his county, and, in spite of the rivalship of Bacon, attorney-general. As such he conducted the prosecutions for the crown in all great state cases, notably those of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh, which Edward Coke conducted with great rancour and asperity. In 1613 he became Chief-justice of the Court of King's Bench; but his rough temper and staunch support of constitutional liberties brought him into disfavour with King James and his courtiers. In 1621 he was committed to the Tower, and soon after expelled from the privy-council.
In 1628 he was chosen member of parliament for Buckinghamshire, and greatly distinguished himself by his vindication of the rights of the Commons, and by proposing and framing the famous Petition of Rights. This was the last of his public acts. On the dissolution of the parliament he retired to his seat in Buckinghamshire, where he died. His principal works are Reports, from 1600 to 1615; Institutes of the Laws of England, in four parts; the first of which contains the celebrated commentary on Littleton's Tenures ('Coke upon Littleton'); A Treatise of Bail and Mainprise, Complete Copyholder. Research Edward Coke
George Eliot was the published name of Mary Ann Evans (Marian Evans), an English writer. She was born in 1819 at Griff near Nuneaton and died in 1880. She was the daughter of a Warwickshire land-agent and surveyor, and received an excellent education at Coventry, comprising the classical and modern languages, and shortly after her twenty-first birthday she became a convert to Rationalism.
Her first literary undertaking was the completion of Mrs. Hennell's translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus (1846). After spending two years abroad she boarded at the house of John Chapman, editor of the Westminster Review, of which she became sub-editor. It was not, however, until January, 1857, that she came prominently into public notice, when the first of a series of tales entitled Scenes from Clerical Life appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. These were written anonymously, and when it was assumed to have been written by a man she adopted her nom de plume. The series came to an end in November, 1857, and in the following year the publication of Adam Bede placed her in the first rank of writers of fiction. It was succeeded by the Mill on the Floss published in 1860, Silas Marner published in 1861, Eomola (1863), Felix Holt (1866), Middlemarch (1872), and Daniel Deronda (1876). In addition to those prose works she published three volumes of poems, The Spanish Gypsy (1818), Agatha (1869), and the Legend of Jubal (1874). Her last work published during her life was the series of essays entitled The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879), but a volume of mixed essays was issued posthumously. For many years she was happily associated both in life and work with George Henry Lewes, though marriage was impossible during the lifetime of Mrs. Lewes. In May, 1880, after Mr. Lewes' death, she married Mr. John Cross, but did not survive the marriage many months, dying rather suddenly at Chelsea on the 22nd of December of that year. Research George Eliot
Henry Bowen Anthony was an American journalist and politician. He was born in 1815 at Coventry, Rhode Island and died in 1884. He was a Whig governor of Rhode Island from 1849 until 1851. From 1859 to 1884 he represented Rhode Island as a Republican Senator. He left a valuable collection of books upon his death, known as the Harris Library, which he left to the Brown University from whence he had graduated in 1833. Research Henry B. Anthony
Henry Austin Dobson was an English poet. He was born in 1840 at Plymouth in 1840 and died in 1921. He was educated at Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, and in 1856 obtained a clerkship under the Board of Trade, where he rose to be one of the officials known as principals. His earliest verses first appeared in book form under the title Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Sociote published in 1873. His other volumes of verse include Proverbs in Porcelain (1877), Old World Idylls (1883), and At the Sign of the Lyre (1885), which the Athenaeum pronounced to be 'of its kind as nearly as possible perfect', Among his prose works may be mentioned his Lives of Hogarth, Fielding, Stede, Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, and Richardson; Thomas Bewick and his Pupils; Four Frenchwomen, a study on Charlotte Corday, the Princesse de Lamballe, and Mesdames Roland and de Genlis; three series of Eighteenth Century Vignettes; A Paladin of Philanthropy, and several editions of standard works. His collected poema were published in one volume in 1897. Many of Henry Dobson's poems are written in various French forms, such as the rondeau and ballade, and all are marked by gracefulness, ease, and careful finish. Research Henry Dobson
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (also known as J O Halliwell) was an English Shakespearian scholar. He was born in 1820 and died in 1889. In 1839 he began his editorial labours with a reprint of Mandeville's Travels. He was a leading and active member of the Percy and Shakespeare societies; for the former he edited the Minor Poems of Lydgate, Early Naval Ballads of England, Nursery Rhymes of England, etc; and for the latter, The Coventry Mysteries, Tarleton's Jests, The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, etc. His chief Shakespearian publications are a Life of Shakspere (1848), the Works of Shakspere in 16 folio volumes, only 150 copies of which were printed; Calendar of the Records of Stratford-on-Avon; History of New Place; and Outlines of the Life of Shakspere. He issued also 47 volumes of lithographed facsimiles of the quarto plays, and a great number of pamphlets on Shakespeare, Stratford, and kindred topics. He also published a valuable Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words. Research James Halliwell-Phillipps
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Abbreviations
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