Cleveland, John

(1613-1658)

   A cavalier poet, born at Loughborough, Leicestershire, son of a clergyman, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. One of his orations, addressed to Charles I when on a visit to Cambridge in 1641, gratified the king, who called for him, gave him his hand to kiss, and commanded a copy to be sent after him to Huntingdon. A staunch Royalist opposed to Cromwell, Cleveland as judge advocate spent three months in prison when the Parliamentarians took charge. When Charles I surrendered to the Scots and was then handed to the English, Cleveland wrote a scathing attack on the Scots' betrayal in his satire, "The Rebel Scot." His works were highly popular, going through many editions between 1647 and 1700. Some of his poems: "An Elegy on Ben Jonson," "Anacreon," "Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford," "On the Memory of Mr. Edward King, Drown'd in the Irish Seas," "Parting with a Friend on the Way," "The Author's Mock-Song to Mark Anthony," "The King's Disguise," "The Scots Apostasie," "To the State of Love," "Upon the King's Return from Scotland."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). The Anchor Antholog y of Seventeenth-Century Verse, Vol. II. Louis L. Martz and Richard S. Sylvester, ed. Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse. Alastair Fowler, ed. Oxford University Press (2004). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.