He had been born in 1604 at Nasing in Essex,
and had been bred up by careful parents, full of that strong craving for
theological studies that characterized the middle classes in the reign of
James I.

Nothing more is known of his youth except that he received a university
education, and, like others who have been foremost in missionary labours,
had a gift for the comparison of languages and study of grammar. He
studied the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues with the zeal that
was infused into all scholars by the knowledge that the Authorized
Version was in hand, and by the stimulus that was afforded by the promise
of a copy of the first edition to him who should detect and correct an
error in the type.

The usual fate of a scholar was to be either schoolmaster or clergyman,
if not both, and young Eliot commenced his career as an assistant to Mr.
John Hooker, at the Grammar School at Little Baddow. He considered this
period to have been that in which the strongest religious impressions
were made upon him. John Hooker was a thorough-going Puritan of great
piety and rigid scruples, and instructed his household diligently in
godliness, both theoretical and practical. Eliot became anxious to enter
the ministry, but the reaction of Church principles, which had set in
with James I., was an obstacle in his way; and imagining all ceremonial
not observed by the foreign Protestants to be oppressions on Christian
liberty, it became the strongest resolution of the whole party to accept
nothing of all these rites, and thus ordination became impossible to
them, while the laws were stringent against any preaching or praying
publicly by any unordained person. The instruction of youth was likewise
only permitted to those who were licensed by the bishop of the diocese;
and Mr. Hooker, failing to fulfil the required tests, was silenced, and,
although forty-seven clergy petitioned on his behalf, was obliged to flee
to Holland.

This decided Eliot, then twenty-seven years of age, on leaving England,
and seeking a freer sphere of action in the newly-founded colonies of New
England, which held a charter from Government. He took leave of his
betrothed, of whom we only know that her Christian name was Anne
(gracious), and that her nature answered to her name, and sailed on the
3rd of November, 1631, in the ship _Lyon_, with a company of sixty
persons, among whom were the family of Governor Winthrop.

They landed at Boston, then