Robert Lovell Gwatkin

Robert Lovell Gwatkin (1757–1843) was an English landowner, High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1789.

He was the son of Edward Gwatkin (died 1764), a merchant in Bristol, and his wife Ann(e) Lovell. Ann Lovell Gwatkin came to know Hannah More, at school with her daughter, and became an important supporter. His father's will, in which Edward Gwatkin describes himself as a soapmaker, made Robert Lovell Gwatkin his residual legatee at age 21. He was an heir also, on his mother's side, to the family of Bedford of Launceston. Gwatkin's sister, Charlotte Ann, married William Gregor. His three younger brother were John, a Royal Navy officer, Edward, a solicitor who married Octavia, daughter of George Harnage, 1st Baronet, (or of Henry Harnage of the 62nd Regiment) and Thomas who died unmarried.

Gwatkin was admitted to the Middle Temple on 21 May 1774, and to St John's College, Cambridge two days later. There he graduated B.A. in 1778, and M.A. by royal mandate the same year. He was a student friend of William Pitt the younger. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, he was courting Theophila Palmer, his future wife. Fanny Burney, visiting the Reynoldses that year, found him very talkative with her, and no one else. He also joined a militia camp defending Plymouth from a possible French invasion, with John Beauchamp and John Vivian, heading Cornish miners from Gwennap.

By his marriage in 1781 to Theophila, a niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gwatkin became closely involved with the Reynolds family; his mother knew Frances Reynolds by the 1770s. He was chief mourner in 1792 at the funeral for Sir Joshua. In his will, Reynolds left Theophila £10,000.

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