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Poet Richard Lovelace’s Sister and Political Murder
Anne (Lovelace) Gorsuch escaped to the New World after her husband’s death
One of my main paternal lines is the Clagetts of Maryland via Thomas Sprigg Prather’s wife. One set of her great-great-grandparents, my direct ancestors, was the older sister of Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace and the Reverend John Gorsuch of Walkern, who was smothered in a hay stack for supporting the King of England.
Richard Lovelace (1617–1657) was a member of the court of Charles I and a royal loyalist when it was dangerous to be one. He and his brothers ended up imprisoned more than once, and the experience led to a number of his greatest writings (e.g., To Althea from Prison, his book “Lucasta”).
His brothers Dudley and Thomas moved to the Colonies after Richard’s death and became Statesmen in New York. But their brother Francis had immigrated to Virginia after the death of their younger brother William at Carmarthen Castle in Wales when it was under Francis’s command in 1645. He was joined by their sister Anne — my ancestor — and her children when they fled England in 1654.
