Chamberlain was born in London, the son of an alderman. He matriculated at Trinity, Cambridge as a pensioner in 1570, but never took a degree. Lancelot Andrewes, Sir Thomas Bodley and Sir Dudley Carleton were among his friends; he accompanied Carleton to Venice in 1610, and their voluminous correspondence survives.

Probably a contemporary of Jonson 's at Westminster, Carleton graduated BA from Christ Church, Oxford in 1595. He travelled for the next five years, and then briefly became secretary to Sir Thomas Parry, ambassador to France (1602-3). He became an MP in 1604. Although he had accompanied Lord Norris to Spain in 1605, he was erroneously implicated in the Gunpowder Plot through his association with the earl of Northumberland, whose secretary he had briefly been. In the same year he saw, and wrote an account of, Blackness . He was appointed ambassador to Brussels in May 1610, but at the last minute his commission was changed to Venice, where he replaced Sir Henry Wotton. He was knighted that September, and arrived in Venice in November. He finished in Venice in 1615, and the following year went as ambassador to The Hague. Having gained Buckingham 's favour, he returned to England in 1625, when he was made vice-chamberlain of the household and a privy councillor, but he was sent almost immediately on an embassy to France. Returning to England in 1626, he supported Buckingham in his impeachment, although without much success. Charles created him Lord Carleton of Imbercourt in May 1626, as a means of strengthening support for the king in the upper house. He was soon, however, sent on yet another embassy to The Hague, not returning until April 1627; he was created Viscount Dorchester in July 1628. A month later he witnessed the assassination of Buckingham. He died in February 1632, leaving a vast surviving correspondence.

Donne was born in Bread Street, London , the son of John, a member of the Ironmongers' Company, and Elizabeth, daughter of the Cahtolic writer John Heywood and Joan Rastell, the niece of Sir Thomas More. His father died when he was four, and his mother soon married again, her new husband being John Syminges, a prominent Catholic physician. Donne was educated at home by Catholic tutors until, at the age of eleven, he went (with his brother Henry ) to Oxford. Although he was at Oxford for three years, Donne left without taking a degree, and little is known of his life over the next few years: he may have studied further at Cambridge, and he probably travelled in Europe. It is known that in 1592 he was admitted into Lincoln's Inn, and it was at this time that he probably began to write poetry, including much of his love poetry and the Satires. He had left the Inns of Court by 1593, and at about the same time his brother Henry died, while imprisoned in Newgate for harbouring a Catholic priest. In 1596 he joined the earl of Essex 's expedition to Cadiz, and a year later Ralegh's expedition to the Azores, recorded in several poems. By the end of 1597 he was back in London, acting as private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper. He became MP for Brackley, in Northamptonshire, in 1601, and in December of the same year secretly married Ann More, Egerton's niece and ward, who was sixteen at the time. When the marriage became public knowledge the following year, the scandal it caused led to Donne's dismissal and the end of his political career, although the marriage was declared legal in April. The couple left London , and their first child was born in 1603. Donne was travelling in France and possibly Italy in 1605; in 1606 the family (which now included three children) moved to Mitcham, near London , and Donne soon after also took lodgings in the Strand . He looked for employment at court, and at the same time wrote on a variety of topics, although chiefly religious: his Pseudo-Martyr was published in 1611 and Ignatius his conclave in 1611. In 1612 he gained an important patron in Sir Richard Drury, on whose daughter Elizabeth he wrote the Anniversaries. In 1614 he became an MP again, for Taunton. He continued to seek a place at court, but finally (and in direct response to royal pressure) he made the decision to go into the Church. He was ordained at St Paul's on 23 Jan. 1615, appointed a royal chaplain and awarded an honorary DD from Cambridge. Ann Donne died in 1617, having given birth to twelve children, of whom six survived their father; in the same year Donne preached his first sermon at Paul's Cross, and thereafter became increasingly famed as a preacher. On 22 Nov. 1621 he was created Dean of St Paul's. In 1623 he became seriously ill, and at this time wrote what was to become the Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), as well as religious verse (including 'Hymn to God my God, in my sickness'). He became seriously ill again towards the end of 1630, and preached his last sermon in Feb. 1631. He died on 31 Mar., having posed on his deathbed for the sketch which was the basis for his monument in St Paul's.

Williams went to St John's, Cambridge in 1598, graduating BA in 1601 and MA in 1605; in 1603 he had been admitted to a fellowship. Thanks to the patronage of Chancellor Ellesmere, he quickly gained many benefices; he took his BD in 1613 and his DD in 1617. He became chaplain to the king at this time and dean of Westminster in 1620. He was elected bishop of Lincoln and, almost simultaneously, lord keeper (after the fall of Bacon) in the summer of 1621. He lost favour with both Buckingham and Charles over the Spanish marriage, and as a result was removed from the office of lord keeper, on a technicality, in October 1625. He was exposed for corruption and perjury in a series of Star Chamber cases in the mid 1630s. He was eventually imprisoned in the Tower, and heavily fined, in 1637, and again in 1639. In the Long Parliament the Lords and the king intervened and Williams was released, taking his seat in the upper house as the leader of the compromise party. The revival in his political fortunes was short-lived: with the rest of the bishops he was impeached in December 1641 and sent once more to the Tower . Released the following May, he fled to the king in York, where he was enthroned as archbishop on 27 June. At the outbreak of civil war he fled once more, to Wales, where, having reached a compromise with the parliamentary commander Mytton in 1646, he died in 1650.

Corbet was educated at Westminster School and then at Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1602, MA 1605). In 1612, when he was proctor, he gave funeral orations on both Prince Henry and Sir Thomas Bodley, and he was also a royal chaplain. He was installed dean of Christ Church on 24 June 1620; he became bishop of Oxford in October 1624 and was translated to Norwich in May 1632. He was strongly anti-puritan. Jonson wrote a poem on his father, and Corbet was himself a (mostly comic) poet. He died in 1635, and is buried in Norwich.