Richard Lovelace

English Cavalier poet. He studied at Oxford, SC England, UK, and in 1642 was imprisoned for presenting to the House of Commons a petition from the royalists of Kent ‘for the restoring the king to his rights’, and was released on bail. He spent his great estate in Kent in the king's cause, assisted the French in 1646 to capture Dunkirk from the Spaniards, and was flung into jail on returning to England in 1648. In jail he revised his poems, including ‘To Althea, from Prison’, and in 1649 published his collection of poems, Lucasta.

Richard Lovelace (1618–1659 or 1659) was an English poet and nobleman, born in Lovelace Place, Bethersden , Kent. He was one of the Cavalier poets, and a noted royalist. During this period he spent his fortune to help supply Royalist forces, and died in penury shortly thereafter.

His most quoted excerpts are from the beginning of the last stanza of To Althea, From Prison:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage

and the end of To Lucasta. Going to the Warres:

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Lov'd I not Honour more.