Unlike many other seventeenth-century divines, John Goodwin never found a contemporary biographer. His supporters were dispersed after the Restoration, and a career of incessant controversy did not fit neatly into the genre of conventional ‘godly lives’. However, we can build up a detailed picture of his early life, and identify some of the sources of his later intellectual development. Even in his youth, Goodwin had become ‘a tryar of mens doctrines’.

Early Life (Norfolk, 1594–1612)

Goodwin was born in the parish of Helloughton, Norfolk in the final decade of the sixteenth century. The parish records note: ‘Johannes Goodwin filius Jo: Goodwin baptis. xiii die Maii 1594’. In the margin a pointing hand has been drawn (probably in the later seventeenth century), indicating the significance of this ‘Johannes Goodwin’. Although Goodwin was a fairly common name in Norfolk, we can be sure that this is our man. His portrait, drawn in 1641, noted that he was forty-seven years old. Moreover, Helloughton was next to East Rainham, where Goodwin became minister in the 1620s under the patronage of the Townshend family.

Goodwin's father and grandfather – both called John – had also been employed by the Townshend family. The grandfather, John Goodwin I (d.1605) was a distinguished surveyor, who had worked in a number of counties, and was Special Surveyor of Lands to Queen Elizabeth. He had been admitted a citizen of Norwich in 1566, and became Town Clerk in 1578.