Donne's parents
were Catholics, and his mother, Elizabeth Heywood, was directly
descended from the sister of the great Sir Thomas More; she was the
daughter of John Heywood the epigrammatist. As a child, Donne's
precocity was such that it was said of him that "this age hath brought
forth another Pico della Mirandola." He entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in
October 1584, and left it in 1587, proceeding for a time to Cambridge,
where he took his degree. At Oxford he began his friendship with Henry
Wotton, and at Cambridge, probably, with Christopher Brooke. Donne was
"removed to London" about 1590, and in 1592 he entered Lincoln's Inn
with the intention of studying the law.

When he came of age, he found himself in possession of a considerable
fortune, and about the same time rejected the Catholic doctrine in
favour of the Anglican communion. He began to produce _Satires_, which
were not printed, but eagerly passed from hand to hand; the first three
are known to belong to 1593, the fourth to 1594, while the other three
are probably some years later. In 1596 Donne engaged himself for foreign
service under the earl of Essex, and "waited upon his lordship" on board
the "Repulse," in the magnificent victory of the 11th of June. We
possess several poems written by Donne during this expedition, and
during the Islands Voyage of 1597, in which he accompanied Essex to the
Azores. According to Walton, Donne spent some time in Italy and Spain,
and intended to proceed to Palestine, "but at his being in the farthest
parts of Italy, the disappointment of company, or of a safe convoy, or
the uncertainty of returns of money into those remote parts, denied him
that happiness." There is some reason to suppose that he was on the
continent at intervals between 1595 and the winter of 1597. His lyrical
poetry was mainly the product of his exile, if we are to believe Ben
Jonson, who told Drummond of Hawthornden that Donne "wrote all his best
pieces ere he was 25 years old." At his return to England he became
private secretary in London to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper
(afterwards Lord Brackley), in whose family he remained four years. In
1600 he found himself in love with his master's niece, Anne More, whom
he married secretly in December 1601. As soon as this act was
discovered, Donne was dismissed, and then thrown into the Fleet prison
(February 1602), from which he was soon released. His circumstances,
however, were now very much straitened.