The poet Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) as a detailed article from the Archaeologica Cantiana from 1876 by the Reverend A J Pearman makes clear, came from a long line of landowners in Kent, stretching back to the start of the 15th century (https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/010%20-%201876/010-17.pdf) Pearman’s interest had been sparked by Lovelace Place farmhouse close to Bethersden Church, which occupied the location of much older building taken down earlier in the 19th century. Quoting another historian, he continues that this place `for so many descents hath borne the name of this family, and was the seminary or seed plot from whence a race of gentlemen issued forth.’ (184). Of these, Richard was to be the most illustrious, and may have spent the final years of his relatively brief life in this place.
According to Lovelace, Pearman was born in Woolwich (though others argue that it may have been in Holland, or somewhere in Kent). He was the son of Sir William and Anne Barne Lovelace. In their son, Pearman states, `were combined those characteristics which go to make up the ideal cavalier – ancient lineage, personal beauty, unbounded generosity, a free joyous spirit – the culture of a scholar and the courage of a soldier’ (Ibid, 210). While he obtained his degree at Oxford aged only 18, his father having already passed away nine years before, through his family he was linked to possessions and lands not just in Bethersden, but also High Halden, Little and Great Chart, Shadoxhurst, and Canterbury.
While 16, he had produced his first extensive poetic work, `The Scholars’. `a comedy which had been acted with considerable applause.’ After briefly serving as a soldier, and writing a work by that name, he returned to Kent, and was fatefully one of the petitioners from Maidstone to the 1642 parliament requesting the restoration of King Charles the First’s rights and powers. In this he stood by other Kentish royalist stalwarts – Sir Roger Twysden, Sir Edward Dering, and Mr Richard Spencer. The petition was judged by the Houses of Parliament on 28th March as `seditious and against privilege and the peace of the kingdom’ (211). It (rather than the petitioners) being burned, Lovelace seems to have been levied with a large number of fines, and become embroiled in other military adventures both in Britain and abroad, so that on his return to England from France in 1648 he was placed as a political prisoner in Petre House, Aldersgate Street, London. There he wrote a number of odes, sonnets and songs, the most famous of which today is `To Althea – From Prison’ (see below). This whole collection, `To Lucasta’ is apparently so named in oblique reference to a woman he had bourn great affection for but who had married on his departure from Britain in the mistaken belief that he would not be returning.
On release from prison, and on discovering that the king had been executed and his cause was a lost one, Lovelace had once more briefly gone to Holland. Pearman states: `It is said that, having parted with Lovelace Place, “he grew very melancholy, became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes” instead of the cloth of gold of his splendid youth, “and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places more befitting the worst of beggars and poorest of servants” (217). He died of consumption in London, at the age of forty, and is buried in St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street.
His poetry however has enjoyed a happier fate. `To Althea- From Prison’ has been set to music various times, most famously by the folk group Fairport Convention, showing that this work speaks to an audience hundreds of years after it was created:
When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round,
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.
When like committed linnets I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King:
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage:
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.