Richard Lovelace (pronounced , homophone of "loveless") (9 December 1617 – 1657) was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of the king during the Civil War. His best known works are "To Althea, from Prison", and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres". Biography Early life and family Richard Lovelace was born on 9 December 1617. His exact birthplace is unknown, and may have been Woolwich, Kent, or Holland. He was the oldest son of Sir William Lovelace and Anne Barne Lovelace. He had four brothers and three sisters. His father was from a distinguished military and legal family; the Lovelace family owned a considerable amount of property in Kent. His father, Sir William Lovelace, was a member of the Virginia Company and an incorporator in the second Virginia Company in 1609. He was a soldier and died during the war with Spain and the Dutch Republic in the Siege of Groenlo (1627) a few days before the town fell. Richard was nine years old when his father died. Lovelace's father was the son of Sir William Lovelace and Elizabeth Aucher, who was the daughter of Mabel Wroths and Edward Aucher, who inherited, under his father's will, the manors of Bishopsbourne and Hautsborne. Elizabeth's nephew was Sir Anthony Aucher (1614 – 31 May 1692) an English politician and Cavalier during the English Civil War. He was the son of her brother Sir Anthony Aucher and his wife Hester Collett. Lovelace's mother, Anne Barne (1587–1633), was the daughter of Sir William Barne and the granddaughter of Sir George Barne III (1532–1593), the Lord Mayor of London and a prominent merchant and public official from London during the reign of Elizabeth I and Anne Gerrard, daughter of Sir William Garrard, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1555. Lovelace's maternal grandmother was Anne Sandys. His great-grandmother was Cicely Wilford and his great-grandfather Most Reverend Dr Edwin Sandys, an Anglican church leader who successively held the posts of Bishop of Worcester (1559–1570), Bishop of London (1570–1576), and Archbishop of York (1576–1588) and was one of the translators of the Bishops' Bible. His mother, Anne Barne Lovelace, married as her second husband, on 20 January 1630, at Greenwich, England, the Very Rev Dr Jonathan Browne. They were the parents of one child, Anne Browne, Richard's half-sister, who married Herbert Croft, later Bishop of Hereford, and