To begin therefore with mine own beginning, I was born in the year of our Lord 1639, about the beginning of the eighth month, so far as I have been able to inform myself, for the parish register, which relates to the time not of birth but of baptism, as they call it, is not to be relied on.
The place of my birth was a little country town called Crowell, situate in the upper side of Oxfordshire, three miles eastward from Thame, the nearest market town.
My father’s name was Walter Ellwood, and my mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Potman, both well descended, but of declining families. So that what my father possessed (which was a pretty estate in lands, and more as I have heard in moneys) he received, as he had done his name Walter, from his grandfather Walter Gray, whose daughter and only child was his mother.
In my very infancy, when I was but about two years old, I was carried to London; for the civil war between King and Parliament breaking then forth, my father, who favoured the Parliament side, though he took not arms, not holding himself safe at his country habitation, which lay too near some garrisons of the King’s, betook himself to London, that city then holding for the Parliament.
There was I bred up, though not without much difficulty, the city air not agreeing with my tender constitution, and there continued until Oxford was surrendered, and the war in appearance ended.
In this time my parents contracted an acquaintance and intimate friendship with the Lady Springett, who being then the widow of Sir William Springett, who died in the Parliament service, was afterwards the wife of Isaac Penington, eldest son of Alderman Penington, of London. And this friendship devolving from the parents to the children, I became an early and particular playfellow to her daughter Gulielma; being admitted, as such, to ride with her in her little coach, drawn by her footman about Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
I mention this in this place because the continuation of that acquaintance and friendship, having been an occasional means of my being afterwards brought to the knowledge of the blessed Truth, I shall have frequent cause, in the course of the following discourse, to make honourable mention of that family, to which I am under so many and great obligations.
Soon after the surrender of Oxford my father returned to his estate at Crowell, which by that time he might have need enough to look after, having spent, I suppose, the greatest part of the moneys which had been left him by his grandfather in maintaining himself and his family at a high rate in London.
My elder brother (for I had one brother and two sisters, all elder than myself) was, while we lived in London, boarded at a private school, in the house of one Francis Atkinson, at a place called Hadley, near Barnet, in Hertfordshire, where he had made some good proficiency in the Latin and French tongues. But after we had left the city, and were re-settled in the country, he was taken from that private school and sent to the free school at Thame, in Oxfordshire.
Thither also was I sent as soon as my tender age would permit; for I was indeed but young when I went, and yet seemed younger than I was, by reason of my low and little stature. For it was held for some years a doubtful point whether I should not have proved a dwarf. But after I was arrived at the fifteenth year of my age, or thereabouts, I began to shoot up, and gave not up growing till I had attained the middle size and stature of men.