William Culpeper
English Poet and Politician

Source: The Dictionary of National Biography. The Concise Dictionary. Part 1, From the beginnings to 1900. London: Oxford University Press, 1953.

William Culpeper (1664-1726), poet and politician, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Culpeper, knight, of Hollingbourne, Kent.

On account of a quarrel with Sir George Rook, an attempt by Rook was made upon William's life.

After trial before Lord-justice Holt, 14 Feb 1701, certain persons were fined for attempts to do him injury.

He was one of five gentlemen who on 8 May 1701 delivered a petition to the House of Commons from the deputy-lieutenants, justices, and grand jurors of Kent, desiring that the house would turn their loyal addresses into bills of supply, etc. As the petition was deemed insolent and seditious, they were ordered into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, and thence sent as prisoners to the Gatehouse, where they remained till the end of the session. Culpeper was chairman of the quarter sessions at Maidstone and drew up the petition.

He intermeddled with poetry as well as with politics, and was the author of a Heroick Poem upon the King 1694, and a Poem to the Lady Duty, and Poem to the Rev. John Brandreth, in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by several Hands, published by Richard Savage, son of Earl Rivers, 1726. He died in 1726. By his wife, Elizabeth Gill, he had three sons and three daughters.

(Hasted's Kent; Parliamentary History, v. 1247-57; History of the Kentish Petition in 1701 in Somers Tracts.) T. F. H.