His father, Sir John Suckling, was a member of parliament, secretary of state, and comptroller of the household under James I, and he became a member of the Privy Council of Charles I. The poet???s mother, who died when he was four, was the sister of Lionel Cranfield, James???s lord treasurer from 1622 to 1626, the one man who almost succeeded in curbing the royal extravagances for a brief period.