Poets

English poet, born at Woolwich (southeast London) in 1618. He was a scion of a Kentish family, and inherited a tradition of military distinction, maintained by successive generations from the time of King Edward III. His father, Sir William Lovelace, had served in the Low Countries, received the honor of knighthood from King James I, and was killed at Grolle in 1628. His brother, Francis Lovelace, the "Colonel Francis" of Lucasta, served on the side of King Charles I, and defended Caermarthen in 1644. His mother's family was legal; her grandfather had been chief baron of the exchequer. Richard was educated at the Charterhouse and at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1634. Through the request of one of the queen's ladies on the royal visit to Oxford he was made M.A., though only in his second year at the university.

Lovelace's fame has been kept alive by a few songs and the romance of his career, and his poems are commonly spoken of as careless improvisations, and merely the amusements of an active soldier. But the unhappy course of his life gave him more leisure for verse-making than opportunity of soldiering. Before the outbreak of the civil war in 1642 his only active service was in the bloodless expedition which ended in the Pacification of Berwick in 1640. On the conclusion of peace he entered into possession of the family estates at Bethersden, Canterbury, Chart and Halden in Kent. By that time he was one of the most distinguished of the company of c..