He matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford in 1660 and was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles II, the following year.
In 1667, he went with his uncle Henry Coventry to the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda, ending the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
On 21 December 1670, owing to a jest made by Coventry in the House of Commons on the subject of the King's amours, Sir Thomas Sandys, an officer of the guards, with other accomplices, by the order of Monmouth, and (it was said) with the approval of the king himself, waylaid him as he was returning home to Suffolk Street and slit his nose to the bone.
The outrage created an extraordinary sensation in the Commons, and in consequence Parliament debated a bill "to prevent malicious maiming and wounding" (22 & 23 Chas.
Sir William Coventry, his uncle, spoke slightingly of him, ridicules his vanity and wished him out of the House of Commons to be "out of harm's way".