LOVELACE, John (1616-70)

Notorious for keeping ‘ill company’ and for his habit of drinking ‘to distemper himself,’ Lovelace succeeded to a substantial estate in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, estimated as being worth £6,000 a year, much of which he contrived to fritter away in the course of his life. Collins, Letters and Memorials, ii. 490; VCH Berks. iii. 193. His dubious reputation – ‘so much addicted to mean company and so easily drawn to debauchery’ – disturbed one prospective mother-in-law, the countess of Leicester, so much so that she eventually resolved ‘to break off with him’, although ‘his estate is good, his person pretty enough, and his wit much more than ordinary.’ Corresp. of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester, 127. Deprived of ‘Doll’ Sidney, in July 1638 Lovelace instead secured a match with Cleveland’s daughter, Anne Wentworth. The marriage was not a happy one, and by 1660 they were barely on speaking terms. Lady Lovelace attempted to turn their son, John Lovelace, later 3rd Baron Lovelace, against her husband and did her utmost to frustrate Lovelace’s attempts to marry his heir to one of the daughters of Baptist Noel, Viscount Campden. Add. 22186, f. 195. In this she was successful, but she gained no hold over her equally dissolute son and, following his father’s death, the younger Lovelace moved swiftly to bar his mother from the family property. Add. 22190, f. 66.

A staunch royalist, Lovelace was one of the few peers who willingly rallied to the king’s cause at the close of the 1630s. CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 479. At the outbreak of Civil War he remained in London initially as part of the ‘peace party’ in the House of Lords working towards accommodation between the king and Parliament. In 1642 he was one of the 40 lords and counsellors who put their names to a declaration that the king had no intention of making war on Parliament, but in 1643 with the peace party effectively broken, Lovelace had little alternative but to join the king at Oxford. As someone, ‘of whose good affections to his service the king had always assurance,’ Lovelace received a warm welcome there, though Prince Maurice viewed his arrival with suspicion attributing it solely to, ‘the recent successes of the king’s armies in the north and west.’ Clarendon, Rebellion, iii. 142-3; C.H. Firth, House of Lords during the Civil War, 135; HMC Portland, iii. 126. Although he did not take an active part in the military campaigns, he was declared delinquent by Parliament and, after petitioning to compound, was fined £7,057 7s. 5d. HMC 6th Rep. 109; CCC, 1188-9. His loyalties remained suspect, and in 1655 he was arrested and committed to the Tower of London. Clarke Papers, iii. (Camden Soc. n.s. lxi) 43.

Lovelace’s estates suffered greatly during the Interregnum. He made no secret of the extent of his losses, declaring at the end of the civil wars that, ‘he was tenant for life of the Manor of Water Eaton … worth before these wars £1,000, but … now not worth anything,’ and that he owed ‘£8,000 at the least besides interests for four years for the same.’ B. Stapleton, Three Oxfordshire Parishes, 111-12. Two years after the Restoration, Lovelace’s estates in Berkshire and Oxfordshire were estimated to be worth in excess of £4,000 annually, but by then his debts were reckoned to amount to over £20,000. Add. 22190, f. 224; Add. 63465, ff. 114-42. Along with a number of impoverished royalists, he viewed the Restoration principally as an opportunity to recover his position. He petitioned the king for a grant of the estate of his former brother-in-law, Henry Marten^‡, which had been forfeited by act of attainder, arguing that, ‘it would little profit his Majesty or the duke of York [James*, duke of York], to whom it, with others similar, is granted, but might serve the petitioner, by enabling him to compound for his recognizance.’ CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 63. In 1667 Lovelace petitioned for grants of two further estates.

In advance of the meeting of the Convention, Lovelace was noted by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as having been one of the ‘lords with the king’. He resumed his seat in the restored House on 16 May 1660: two days after the House had ordered that letters should be sent to him and six other peers requiring their attendance. Present on approximately 76 per cent of all sitting days in the Convention, he was added to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions after which he was named to six committees prior to the September adjournment and to a further nine committees during the remainder of the session.

Although Lovelace seems to have wielded little local political influence, his son, John Lovelace, was returned for Berkshire in the 1661 election, perhaps benefiting from his father’s patronage. Lovelace returned to the House at the opening of the Cavalier Parliament in May 1661, after which he was present on almost 80 per cent of all sitting days, during which he was nominated to 45 committees. Excused at a call on 20 May 1661, he resumed his seat the following day. On 11 July he was estimated as being opposed to the claim of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to the lord great chamberlaincy.

Following the prorogation, Lovelace’s attention was taken up with the management of affairs in Berkshire. The county was home to a large number of nonconformists, and in the summer of 1662 Lovelace turned out several of Newbury’s aldermen, including the mayor, for refusing to take the oaths, though he did not offer them an opportunity to do so. Ibid. p. 419; Stater, Noble Govt. 129. Despite this, Lovelace does not appear to have been a particularly stern enforcer of the laws against Dissenters, or to have been averse to working with those formerly in opposition to the king as evidenced by the fact that the government refused to employ at least one of his nominated deputies. Stater, 79. In October Henry Bennet, later earl of Arlington, wrote to Lovelace demanding that he ‘suppress private and dangerous meetings in Berkshire, and more especially to take up teachers, joining military with civil power therein’. In 1663, however, Peter Mews, later bishop of Winchester, complained that one ejected minister, Christopher Fowler, had refused to desist from holding meetings at his house protesting that he had ‘satisfied the lord lieutenant.’ CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 531; 1663-4, p. 18. When Fowler was imprisoned in 1664, Lovelace took security for his good behaviour, despite an appeal from Sir William Armorer to the chancellor, Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, that he should not allow Lovelace to do so. CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 487; CCSP, v. 391. Lovelace’s support for a broad church settlement, encompassing some dissenting opinion, appears to have been reflected both in the presence of the Independent minister, John Owen, as chaplain at Hurley between 1640 and 1650 and in Lovelace’s attitude to the nonconformists in his lieutenancy. Swatland, 152; R. Spalding, Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605-75, 181; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 647.

Lovelace resumed his seat at the opening of the new session on 18 Feb. 1663, after which he was present on just under 70 per cent of all sitting days. Named to seven committees in the course of the session, on 7 May he was one of several peers nominated to arbitrate between the dowager Baroness Abergavenny and George Nevill, 11th Baron Abergavenny. On 13 July Wharton assessed Lovelace, who was still broadly a supporter of the court interest, as unlikely to support the attempted impeachment of Clarendon orchestrated by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol. Four days later, he registered his proxy for the rest of the session with Clarendon’s close associate, John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater. Lovelace returned to the House at the opening of the following session on 16 Mar. 1664, after which he was present on over 80 per cent of all sitting days, but he was named to just two committees.

Between 1662 and 1666 Lovelace was engaged in a long-standing dispute with Bulstrode Whitelocke^‡ over Whitelocke’s purchase of the manor of Blundesden. With the assistance of Whitelocke’s brother-in-law, Francis Willoughby, 4th (CP5th) Baron Willoughby of Parham, Lovelace had persuaded Whitelocke to buy the estate to enable him to pay off his creditors. Spalding, 181. Whitelocke suspected ‘ill dealing’ and was proved right when Lovelace refused to honour their agreement, saying that, ‘Whitelocke might sue him upon his covenant’. Such a course of action, as Whitelocke knew full well, would be of no benefit to him, as Lovelace, ‘had made over all his estates to others, to defeat his creditors, and that no suit against him could have any effect by reason thereof, and because he was a peer.’ A resolution was eventually arrived at whereby Clarendon bought Blunsden, paying £6,000 to Lovelace and £7,000 to Whitelocke. Whitelocke Diary, 625, 641, 662.

In the midst of this, Lovelace resumed his seat in the House just over a week into the new session on 6 Dec. 1664, after which he was present on 58 per cent of all sitting days and during which he was named to five committees. He took his seat in the subsequent session on 9 Oct. 1665 (attending 11 of its 16 days and being named to three committees). During the 1666-7 session he was present on 81 per cent of all sitting days and was named to 13 committees, including that concerning a bill for his father-in-law, Cleveland. On 24 Jan. 1667 he was named one of the commissioners for accounts. Lovelace attended two days in July 1667. He resumed his seat in the 1667-9 session on 10 Oct. 1667, after which he was present on almost 87 per cent of all sitting days. Named to 14 committees, the session was dominated for Lovelace by a dispute between him and other members of his family over the settlement of the Cleveland estate (Cleveland having died in March 1667). Lovelace’s sister-in-law Philadelphia, Lady Wentworth, complained to the under-secretary of state, Joseph Williamson^‡, that Lovelace was attempting to ‘prejudice his wife against her’ and warned that ‘if his lordship disquiet the family affairs, he will only hurt himself.’ CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 559. Although present in the House for the debates surrounding the proceedings against Clarendon in November and December, Lovelace did not sign the protest at the resolution to pass the bill banishing the former lord chancellor, but it seems reasonable to assume that he would have been opposed to Clarendon’s impeachment. On 12 Mar. 1668 Lovelace was one of the peers named to the committee for Sir John Weld’s bill, a measure designed to settle Weld’s claims on the Cleveland estate. The following month, on 3 Apr., Lady Wentworth submitted a petition to the House objecting to a clause in Weld’s bill, but although counsel was heard in the matter ten days later, the business was continually put off and by the close of the session no resolution had been reached. Disputes over the settlement of the Cleveland estate continued to be argued through the courts and wrangling over the inheritance rumbled on until after Lovelace’s death. Add. 63465, f. 52; CSP Dom. 1670, p. 168. The close of the session offered Lovelace no relief either as he found himself engaged once more in disputes with Whitelocke. Whitelocke Diary, 748, 761.

Lovelace’s prodigality and reputation for deceitfulness always stood in the way of achieving a real financial recovery. He refused to curb his extravagant expenditure, and in 1668 he was reported to have lost £600 during one race at Newmarket alone. Verney Mems. ii. 223. In spite of these shortcomings, the same year he succeeded the disgraced Clarendon as steward and lieutenant of Woodstock Park. CSP Dom. 1667-8, pp. 245, 394. He spent some effort in restoring the crumbling buildings on the estate, and he appears to have lodged in the gatehouse for the remainder of his life. VCH Oxon. xii. 439.

Lovelace took his seat in the House a few days after the opening of the new session on 25 Oct. 1669, after which he was present on 64 per cent of all sitting days, but he was named to just three committees. He returned to the House for the new session on 14 Feb. 1670, sitting on 26 occasions before attending for the final time on 2 April. During the course of the session he was named to 13 committees. Two days after his final attendance, Lovelace submitted a petition to the House concerning a dispute with William Thorowgood over lands conveyed to Lovelace by Cleveland as part of his wife’s marriage portion. The petition was ordered to be read the following day, though in the event it was not considered until 9 Apr. and no further progress was made during the session. Lovelace died less than six months later, apparently reduced to near poverty and forced to eke out his days in the gatehouse at Woodstock. He was buried at Hurley. In his brief will, devised six years previously, he left what little remained of his property to his son, the future 3rd baron. Add. Ch. 26385. Lovelace left an estate encumbered by debts and a family riven by feuding. He was assessed dismissively by Whitelocke as an ‘unworthy and dishonest man.’ Whitelocke Diary, 761.