In his Specimens of Early English Poets (1790), George Ellis quotes from a 1641 edition of the sonnets by Sir Francis Kynaston that were later included in Leoline and Sydanis (1642); thus, the sonnets may have been published separately.

Leoline and Sydanis is a heroic romance in verse containing some of the legendary history of Wales and Anglesey. The sonnets, addressed to a "Cynthia," are not technically sonnets, but are described in the Dictionary of National Biography as "often of genuine merit." William Strode, William Cartwright, Dudley Digges, and other Oxford writers prefaced fifteen poems to Kynaston's translation (1635) of Troilus and Criseyde.

Sir Francis Kynaston was born in 1587 to Sir Edward Kinaston and Isabel, daughter of Sir Nicholas Bagenall, at Oteley, Shropshire. Sir Edward was sheriff of Shropshire in 1599. On 11 December 1601 Francis matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, and graduated with a B.A. from St. Mary Hall on 14 June 1604. According to...