Person:William Lovelace (17)

Sgt. William Lovelace on FindAGrave

In Elizabeth I's reign the head of the Bethersden branch was William Lovelace, Serjeant-at-Law, who bought the ancient site of the Grey Friars in Canterbury. A highly successful lawyer, Serjeant Lovelace (died 1576/7) was a well-known figure in Kent and to him was dedicated the earliest printed treatise on growing hops: A Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden (1574). The Serjeant’s younger son Thomas (died 1591) has a small brass also on the wall of the north aisle. Sir William Lovelace, the heir of Serjeant Lovelace, lived partly in Canterbury and partly in Bethetsden where he was buried in 1629. Sir William outlived his only son, also Sir William, who had been killed in Holland in 1627.

The younger Sir William’s eldest son was Richard Lovelace the Cavalier poet, courtier and soldier. At the end of April 1642 Lovelace, “reputed the handsomest man in England”, in company with Sir William Boteler of Teston near Maidstone, presented to Parliament the ‘Kentish Petition” for the restoration of the Anglican Liturgy, the maintenance of the bench of Bishops and ‘a good understanding between King and Parliament.’ As a similar petition by Sir Edward Dering (of Surrenden Dering) and the learned Sir Roger Twysden had three weeks before been declared seditious, and had then been burnt by the Common Hangman, Boteler was committed by the House of Commons to the Fleet Prison, and Lovelace to the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster. While there he wrote the poem “To Althea, from Prison,” containing the famous lines:

Stone Walls doe not a Prison make,

Nor I‘ron bars a Cage;

Mindes innocent and quiet take

That for an Hermitage.