Richard Timbs's origins, at first sight, appear truly obscure. Although his later prominence in the affairs of the town is not in doubt, Timbs was not a major Cambridge figure in 1640. That he was not yet a freeman seems a fair measure of his lowly social position. He first appears in the records as a resident of Cambridge in 1631 when he married Mary Watson at St Andrew's-the-Great. Within six years he had remarried, for in 1637 his second wife, Elizabeth, gave birth to the first of their four children. He was then still living in the same parish. One of the earliest references to him describes him as a glover, but he went on to earn his living as a fellmonger, probably trading in cattle hides rather than sheep skins. The move from working with leather to trading in it would not have been difficult. He later claimed to have known Lowry since at least the early 1630s. The only public office he had so far achieved was a minor parish one as an overseer of the streets.

The chances are that Timbs was not originally from Cambridge. This was not at all unusual. For several generations the number of people living in Cambridge had been expanding very rapidly, largely as a result of outsiders moving into the town from elsewhere.