Cleveland John

Cleveland, John (1613-1658), an English poet, born at Loughborough in Leicestershire, the son of a clergyman who was deprived of his living in 1644 on the ground of his loyalty. John Cleveland graduated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1631, and three years afterwards obtained a Fellowship at St. John's. But his political opinions and his satires upon the Parliamentarians led to the loss of his preferment, and though the king did something for him, he was, after being imprisoned at Yarmouth as a danger to the Commonwealth, and released by Cromwell, who seems to have been good to him, compelled to become a wandering beggar. His best satire is a Petition to the Lord Protector for the Scots Rebels. Cleveland might well have sat to Sir Walter Scott as the prototype of Roger Wildrake of Whittlesea Mere.