sent to Coventry!

The other day, my wife came across the expression sent to Coventry and asked me what the reason was for this expression, which Wikitionary explains as

Verb

send to Coventry ‎(third-person singular simple present sends to Coventry, present participle sending to Coventry, simple past and past participle sent to Coventry)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To ostracise, or systematically ignore someone.

   The group decided to send the unpopular members to Coventry.

I had never heard this expression before, certainly not while in Coventry, so checked on Wikipedia to see whether or not it was related to the rather unappealing down-town postwar reconstruction. As it appears, the most likely connection is much more ancient as it relates to royalist troops being sent to Coventry, a parliamentarian town during the English Civil War,