Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/174

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Lovelace
168
Lovelace

[q. v.], by Mary, daughter of William King of Iver, Buckinghamshire, was a grandson of the first baron. He took his seat in the House of Lords in November 1693, and was made guidon of the horse guards, vice the Earl of Westmorland, on 30 May 1699 (Luttrell). Having inherited little or nothing except creditors' claims with the title, he was wretchedly poor, and did not very materially improve his position by his marriage, on 20 Oct. 1702, to Charlotte, daughter of Sir John Clayton of Richmond. He was however created colonel of the new regiment on 17 Jan. 1705–6, and kissed hands for the government of New York and New Jersey (in place of Lord Cornbury, ‘recall'd for numerous malpractices and misappropriations’) 23 March 1708. He sailed from Southampton in September following, being accompanied by fifty-two families of ‘poor Palatines,’ who are stated to have been the first German emigrants to America. News came of his arrival in January 1709. He was well received, and issued conciliatory addresses to the colonists, who replied, with characteristic independence, that they had hitherto been subjected to the worst government in the world, but hoped for better things. Before he had effected anything, however, he died of an apoplexy, on 6 May 1709, and was buried at New York (Boyer, Annals, vii. 244, viii. 380–4, Roberts, New York). He left two sons, John and Nevil, successive barons. The latter died in 1736, when the barony became extinct; it was revived in the person of William, eighth lord King [q. v.] (For the connection between the King and Lovelace families see ‘Gent. Mag.’ 1839, ii. 144.)

[Burke's Extinct Peerages, p. 334; Peerage of England, 1710, p. 70; Wood's Fasti, ii. 252; Bloxam's Magdalen College and James II (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), p. 73; Bloxam's Magd. Coll. Reg. i. 106–7; Reliq. Hearn. i. 249; Humphrey Prideaux's Letters to Ellis, Camd. Soc.; Lysons's Magna Britannia, i. 299; Burton's House of Orange, p. 75; Banks's Life of William III, 1744, p. 213; Ranke's History of England, iv. 446, 509; Lingard's History, x. 345; Add. Charters, 13611–748 (title deeds, &c.); Add. MSS. 22187–90 (papers chiefly relating to money matters), 22186, f. 195 (a letter from Lovelace to his father, dated about 1660); Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th, 11th, and 12th Reports, Appendices, passim.]

T. S.

LOVELACE, RICHARD (1618–1658), cavalier and poet, was of an old Kentish family, which had held the manor of Bethersden since 1367, and was closely allied to the Lovelaces of Kingsdown and Canterbury, and more remotely to the Lovelace family of Hurley in Berkshire. Sir William Lovelace, who was admitted at Gray's Inn in 1548, and called to the bar in 1551, was M.P. for Canterbury in 1562 and again in 1572 (Official Returns), and played a somewhat prominent part in his last parliament (D'Ewes, Journals of Parliament under Elizabeth, pp. 178 sq.) He was raised to the rank of sergeant-at-law in Easter term 1561, took a large share in Kentish affairs, and was buried in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral on 1 April 1577 (Archæolog. Cantiana. x. 197–200). His son, the poet's grandfather, Sir William Lovelace (1561–1629), knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1599, was a correspondent of Sir Dudley Carleton (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–18), and was buried at Bethersden, 12 Oct. 1629. The poet's father, also Sir William, ‘of Woolwich’ (1584–1628), served bravely in the Low Countries under Sir Horace Vere (Collins, Letters and Memorials, ii. 322), was knighted by James I, and was killed at the siege of ‘Grolle’ in Holland, leaving a widow and a large family (Eg. MS. 2553). Of Richard's younger brothers, the eldest, Francis, the ‘Colonel Francis’ of Lucasta, served the royalist cause in Wales, and was governor of Carmarthen from June 1644 until the town was taken by Langharne in October 1645 (Phillips, Civil War in Wales, i. 233, 337, ii. 190, 274; Lovelace, Poems). Another Francis Lovelace (1594–1664), with whom the poet's brother has been confused, was son of Launcelot Lovelace, of the Canterbury branch of the family. He was admitted to Gray's Inn on 7 Aug. 1609 (Foster, Reg. p. 121), took an active part against the parliament in Kent (Cal. of Comm. for Compounding, p. 892), was recorder of Canterbury in the year of the Restoration, and in his official capacity delivered an address to the king and another to the queen (Henrietta Maria), on their passage through the place in October 1660. He died on 1 March 1664, being then steward of the chancery court of the Cinque Ports (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1664, p. 502; Brit. Mus. Cat.) Another of the poet's brothers, William, served under the poet in the civil war, and was killed at Carmarthen in 1645 (Works, ed. Hazlitt, pp. 125 and xviii a.) Thomas was in 1628 admitted into Sutton's Hospital on the ground that his father had served the king ‘about thirty years in the warres and left his lady rich only in great store of children’ (Letter from Charles I to governors of Sutton's Hospital, dated 1629, Eg. MS. 2553, fol. 51 b; cf. Gent. Mag. 1884, pt. ii. p. 262), and the youngest, Dudley-Posthumus, was the editor of Richard's posthumous poems. A Thomas and a Dudley Lovelace were serving under Francis Lovelace [q. v.], governor of New York, in 1673 (Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser. 1669–74, p. 1122). The poet also had three