Background
He was third son of Henry Lok, a London mercer (d 1571), by his wife Anne Vaughan, the poet.
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Henry Lok
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According to Anthony Wood, Lok spent some time in Oxford between his sixteenth and twenty-first year, but he does not seem to have matriculated in the university, and took no degree. On leaving Oxford he went to court and found a patron. In 1591 he contributed a sonnet to the Essayes of a Prentice, by James VI of Scotland.
A persistent petitioner, early in 1597 Lok was, according to his own account, encouraged by the Countess of Warwick to apply to Sir Robert Cecil for a pension to tide him over.
Lok"s miscellaneous appeals resulted in his obtaining confidential employment in 1599 in Bayonne and the Basque country, collecting political gossip. He was skilled in ciphers, but indiscreet, and at one time his life seems to have been in danger.
A year later he was living in the Strand, and Cecil did not employ him again. In March 1606 he was imprisoned as an insolvent debtor in the Westminster Gatehouse, and in May 1608 he was similarly situated and friendless in the Clink in Southwark.
Lok married Ann Moyle of Cornwall, and had two sons, Henry, born in 1592, and Charles.
