Richard Brathwait was born of country gentry at Burneshead Hall, near Kendal, Westmoreland, probably in 1588. Many autobiographical details are scattered in his works; they give a picture of a normal yet deeply remembered rural childhood, as when he recalls in A Spiritual Spicerie (1638) that when in the house he always wanted to be in the fields, and when in the fields, in the house. In 1604 he was admitted as a commoner to Oriel College, Oxford; he seems to have left without a degree in 1607. Apparently, he was also associated in some capacity with Pembroke College, Cambridge, during these years. In 1609, in accord with parental wishes but strongly against his own, he entered Gray's Inn in London to study law.

Brathwait's first published writings correspond with a period of ignorance of specifics about his life, between his father's death in 1610 and his marriage in 1617, but references in them suggest...