The earliest member of the Darwin family to enter the University is recorded by Freeman as William Darwin of Lincoln (1620–75), who matriculated in 1640 from Magdalene College. He did not take a degree, presumably because he left in 1642 to serve the King as Captain Lieutenant in Sir William Pelham's troop of horse, as a result of which his lands were forfeited during the Commonwealth. He went to Lincoln's Inn in 1645, where he qualified, and after the Restoration he became Recorder of the City of Lincoln. His son, another William (1655–82), and his grandson Robert (1680–1754) did not come up to Cambridge, but Robert was a barrister described by a contemporary as ‘a person of curiousity’ from whom all the later Darwins with academic pretensions were descended.

Robert Waring Darwin (1724–1816), head of the family in the ninth generation listed by the genealogists, matriculated from St John's in 1743, but apparently did not take a degree. He qualified as a barrister, though he never practised, nor did he marry. Unlike his younger brother Erasmus he had strong taste for poetry, and setting a pattern for what was to come, was the first of the Darwins to write a book, Principia Botanica, or a Concise and Easy Introduction to the Sexual System of Linnaeus, which ran to three editions.