He was born in Ewell in Surrey[2] the son of a prominent nurseryman in Twickenham,[3] Richard Corbet was educated at Westminster School[4] and then studied at both Broadgates Hall and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining his Master of Arts (MA) in 1605.

Having then taken holy orders (he was, irregularly, ordained both deacon and priest on the same day, 26 March 1613, by John Bridges, Bishop of Oxford),[1] he became a Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 1617.

In consideration of his preaching, which included an oration on the death of the heir to the throne (Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales), James VI and I made him one of the royal chaplains.

[1] He was generally an easy-going man and, although he was anti-Puritan and wrote against them, did little to repress Puritan activities around Norwich when William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, began his campaign against them.

[6] Later he appropriated the form of the sung ballad so as to break down the distinction between different kinds of audience and make its intermediary possibilities available for wider dispersal of his particular views.

[9] Corbet spent much of his life in Oxford, where it is possible that he knew the younger men Henry King and Jasper Mayne, both educated like him at Westminster School and Christ Church, and fellow contributors of poetical tributes to Donne's collected poems.

Verse letters indicate the Court circle of royal favourites and their dependents among whom he moved, being addressed to John Mordaunt, 1st Earl of Peterborough, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and Thomas Aylesbury.