Edward was one of nine children: his siblings included Sir Robert King of Boyle Abbey and the writer Dorothy Dury.
Edward King was admitted a pensioner of Christ's College, Cambridge, on 9 June 1626, and four years later was elected a fellow.
[1] Milton, though two years his senior and himself anxious to secure a fellowship, became his close friend as well as his rival.
In 1637 he set out for Ireland to visit his family, but the ship in which he was sailing struck on a rock near the Welsh coast, and King was drowned.
Of his own writings many Latin poems contributed to different collections of Cambridge verse survive, but they are not of sufficient merit to explain the esteem in which he was held.