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.

His mother, Anne Barne Lovelace, married as her second husband, on 20 January 1630, at Greenwich, England, the Very Rev Dr Jonathan Browne.

On 5 May 1631, Lovelace was sworn in as a Gentleman Wayter Extraordinary to King Charles I, an honorary position for which one paid a fee.

Lovelace attended the University of Oxford and was praised by his contemporary Anthony Wood[4] as "the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld; a person also of innate modesty, virtue and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex".

[10] In 1639 Lovelace joined the regiment of Lord Goring, serving first as a senior ensign and later as a captain in the Bishops' Wars.

On his return to his home in Kent in 1640, Lovelace served as a country gentleman and a justice of the peace, encountering civil turmoil over religion and politics.

[10] In 1641, Lovelace led a group of men to seize and destroy a petition for the abolition of Episcopal rule, which had been signed by 15,000 people.

This first experience of imprisonment brought him to write one of his best known lyrics, "To Althea, from Prison", in which he illustrates his noble and paradoxical nature.

As in his previous incarceration, this experience led to creative production—this time in the cause of spiritual freedom, as reflected in the release of his first volume of poetry, Lucasta.

When serving in the Bishops' Wars, he wrote the sonnet "To Generall Goring", a poem of Bacchanalian celebration rather than a glorification of military action.

In 1660, after Lovelace died, Lucasta: Postume Poems was published; it contains A Mock-Song, which has a darker tone than his previous works.

[4] William Winstanley thought highly of Lovelace's work and compared him to an idol: "I can compare no Man so like this Colonel Lovelace as Sir Philip Sidney" of which it is in an Epitaph made of him; His most quoted excerpts are from the beginning of the last stanza of "To Althea, From Prison": and the end of "To Lucasta.