Educated at Charterhouse and Oxford University, he took part in expeditions by the troops of King Charles I against various rebels from 1639 to 1642. In 1642, returning to his estates, he was nominated to present a Royalist petition to a hostile Parliament, for which he was ordered to prison by this elected body. During his short term in prison, he wrote one of his most famous poems, 'To Althea, from Prison'. He later spent many years fighting in France and Spain. 