Arthur Capel, 1st Baron Capel

Arthur Capel, 1st Baron Capel (1604–1649), was a Royalist commander in the English Civil War. Captured after the fall of Colchester in 1648, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded in 1649; the poem "Loyalty Confined", traditionally attributed to him, is said to have been written there.

The poem here is the one printed under his name in Frederick Locker's Lyra Elegantiarum (London: E. Moxon, 1867), an anthology of vers de société and vers d'occasion by deceased authors; the texts follow that first edition.