John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace (1641 – 27 September 1693) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1661 to 1670 when he inherited the title Baron Lovelace. He was notorious for his drunken and extravagant way of life, which undoubtedly hastened his death.
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Life
Lovelace was born at Hurley, Berkshire, the son of John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace, and Anne Lovelace, 7th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness le Despenser. suo jure (née Lady Anne Wentworth). He matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, on 25 July 1655, and was awarded MA on 9 September 1661.
In 1661, Lovelace was elected Member of Parliament for Berkshire in the Cavalier Parliament, and sat in the Commons until 1670 when he inherited the peerage on the death of his father. He developed a reputation as an ardent Whig, and during the Exclusion Crisis he strongly supported Exclusion. Though he professed to be a Puritan in religion, he was also a keen sportsman, and notorious as a heavy drinker and gambler. Due to his gambling debts, and other debts he inherited from his father, he was obliged in the end to sell nearly all his lands, including the main family residence of Hurley. He was called "a man of good natural parts, but of very loose and very ill principles".
Lovelace was also notably anti-Catholic: under the Catholic regime of James II he created a scandal when a Catholic magistrate sent him a summons, which he used in public to wipe his bottom, for which misdemeanour he was severely reprimanded by the Privy Council, and threatened with prosecution. J.P. Kenyon remarks that a more sensible ruler than James II would have let the matter drop, as a rather tasteless joke with no political overtones.