John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace (1641 – 27 September 1693) was an English peer and MP.
He was born at Hurley, Buckinghanshire, the son of John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace and Lady Anne, 7th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Le Despenser. He entered Wadham College, Oxford, matriculating in 1655 and gaining an MA in 1661.
He was elected MP for Berkshire in 1661 and served until he was ennobled in 1670 on the death of his father. He developed a reputation as an ardent Whig and a sportsman and gambler.
He was also anti-Catholic and admitted into the confidence of those organising the Glorious Revolution to replace the Catholic James II with the Protestant William of Orange. He arranged secret meetings in a cellar at his Ladye Place home in Hurley. Once he heard that William had landed in England he set out with 70 men to join him but was captured and imprisoned in Gloucester Castle. After his release he entered Oxford with a force of 300 cavalry to occupy the city for William.
In 1692, suffering from a life of alcoholic excess, he fell down a flight of stairs and never recovered and died the following year in Lincolns Inn Fields, London. He had married in 1662 Martha, the daughter and coheiress of Sir Edmond Pye of Bradenham, Buckinghamshire; they had one son, John, who died in infancy, and three daughters. The peerage passed to his cousin William’s son, John Lovelace, 4th Baron Lovelace, who became a Governor of the New York colony. Their daughter Martha succeeded her grandmother as the 8th Baroness Wentworth.
References
Retrieved from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lovelace,_3rd_Baron_Lovelace
