CORNELIUS JOHNSON | Portrait of Thomas, 1st Baron Coventry (1578-1640), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), for his gallery at Clarendon House, London;

By descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire; 

Purchased by his brother, Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester (1642-1711), together with Cornbury Park and all its contents, in 1697;

By descent at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his son, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);

By transfer to his son, Henry, Viscount Cornbury (1710-53) in 1749, who died without issue;

By inheritance to his niece, Lady Charlotte Capel (1721-90), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon of the second creation (1709-86), and transferred to The Grove, Hertfordshire;

Thence by direct descent to the present owner.

G.P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, London 1804, vol. 2, p. 210;

Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the friends and contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon: Illustrative of portraits in his Gallery, London 1852, vol. III, p. 254;

A.J. Finberg, 'A Chronological List of Portraits by Cornelius Johnson', in The Walpole Society, vol. X, Oxford 1922, p. 21, no. 52, reproduced pl. XXXVI;

P. Toynbee, 'Horace Walpole's journals of visits to country seats, &c', in The Walpole Society, vol. XVI, Oxford 1927, p. 38; 

R.J.B. Walker, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Engraving in the Palace of Westminster, London 1960, vol. II, pp. 28-9;

D. Piper, Catalogue of the 17th Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, London 1963, p. 84;

R. Gibson, Catalogue of the Portraits in the collection of the Earl of Clarendon, privately published 1977, no. 54;

K. Hearn, Cornelius Johnson, London 2015, p. 19. 

In the introduction to his Chronological List of Portraits by Cornelius Johnson, published in 1922 in The Walpole Society, the distinguished art historian A.J. Finberg wrote that his 'admiration for Johnson’s work was first excited by the portrait of Thomas Lord Coventry in the possession of the Earl of Clarendon, at The Grove.' Going on to praise Johnson for his 'convincing truthfulness of characterisation', his 'delicacy and precision of drawing, which place Johnson in the first rank of English portrait painters', he praised this picture for its 'solidity, strength, restraint; it is superb in character, and is most dignified and impressive.'¹

Coventry was Johnson's most assiduous client and sat for the artist a number of times during the course of his life. Painted in 1631, at the height of both the artist’s career and Coventry’s power, this is one of the finest of all Johnson’s portraits of his great patron and depicts him in peer’s robes with his hand resting on the purse of the Great Seal. Born in 1578 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the Inner Temple, Coventry was a prominent statesman and one of the foremost English lawyers of the early seventeenth century. In 1625 he was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, an office equivalent to that of Lord Chancellor, and it was in this capacity that he delivered King Charles I’s reprimand to the House of Commons the following year, declaring that 'liberty of counsel' alone belonged to the House and not 'liberty of control', an action which presaged Charles’s decade long Personal Rule.

Clarendon, who succeeded him to the role of Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal after the Restoration, was a great admirer of Coventry, and praised his statesmanship, commenting that 'he understood not only the whole science and mystery of the law as well as any man that ever sate [sic] in that place, but had a clear conception of the whole policy of government both of Church and State.'

A half-length copy of this portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 716).² Other copies include those at the Inner Temple, Charlecote and formerly at St. Giles House.

1 Finberg 1922, p. 1. 

2 https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01527/Thomas-Coventry-1st-Baron-Coventry