Daniel Defoe was born Daniel Foe to a family of Dissenters in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London; his exact birth date is unknown, but historians estimate that it was in the year 1659 or 1660.
He was born as the son of Alice and James Foe. His father was a City tradesman and member of the Butchers’ Company.
Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux.
Why he added the "De" to his surname is a subject of speculation; he might have decided to return to an original family name, or wanted to give himself a high-born cachet. In any event, in his mid-thirties he began signing his name as Defoe.
The Foes were Dissenters, Protestants who did not belong to the Anglican Church. This occasionally comes through Defoe's writing.
His father James Foe, though a member of the Butchers' Company, was a tallow chandler.
His parents were Presbyterian dissenters; he was educated in a dissenting academy at Newington Green run by Charles Morton and is believed to have attended the church there.
James Foe, his father, a butcher by trade, was a sober, deeply pious Presbyterian of Flemish descent--one of perhaps twenty percent of the population that had relinquished ties to the main body of the Church of England.
It is reasonable to assume as the son of a Dissenter much of his time was spent in religious observances. It is likely that this spurred the fervent belief in Divine Providence that is so evident in his writings. Since they were barred from Oxford and Cambridge universities, Dissenters sent their children to their own schools.
In Defoe's early life he experienced first-hand some of the most unusual occurrences in English history : in 1665, 70,000 were killed by Plague of London. The Great Fire of London (1666) hit Defoe's neighbourhood hard, leaving only his and two other homes standing.
In 1667, when Defoe was probably about seven years old, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and attacked Chatham. By the time he was about 10, Defoe's mother Annie had died.
he was educated in a dissenting academy at Newington Green run by Charles Morton and is believed to have attended the church there.
At about the age of fourteen, he was enrolled in the Dissenting academy in Newington Green. Newington's headmaster, Rev. Charles Morton, a plain-spoken Puritan, was a progressive educator (despite a belief in storks spending the winter on the moon). He gave his students a thorough grounding in English as well as the customary Greek and Latin. Morton is seen as a major influence on Defoe's writing style; the other influence was the Bible.
James Foe wanted his son to enter in ministry, but Daniel Defoe preferred other things. When he was about 18, he left school. After some years of preparations, he went into the hosiery business.
Although intended for the ministry, Defoe settled instead on a career as a commission agent. For more than a decade he traded in a wide range of goods, including stockings, wine, tobacco, and oysters. Defoe's love for trade permeated his writings. He wrote countless essays and pamphlets on economic theory which were advanced for his time. Indeed, had he taken his own advice, he would have been a wealthy man. While his years as a broker endowed him with insight into human nature, his risky and unscrupulous ventures (he was sued at least eight times, and once bilked his own mother-in-law out of four hundred pounds in a cat-breeding deal), combined with bad luck and faulty judgment, more often than not steered him into debt, deceit, and political double-dealing.
His business ventures failed and left him with large debts, amounting over seventeen thousand pounds. In the early 1680s Defoe was a commission merchant in Cornhill but went bankrupt in 1691. This burden shadowed the remainder of his life, which he once summoned: "In the School of Affliction I have learnt more Philosophy than at the Academy, and more Divinity than from the Pulpit
In 1684 he married Mary Tuffley; they had two sons and five daughters.
His own marriage to Mary Tuffley, a merchant's daughter, despite its length of forty-seven years and fecundity of eight children, cannot have been a model of matrimonial paradise. Defoe's unstable fortunes, his extended visits abroad, and his absence while a fugitive from enemies and creditors would have tried the patience of the most patient, loving spouse. There is evidence also that, in spite of loving them deeply, Defoe alienated some, if not all of his seven children.
Defoe was involved in Monmouth rebellion in 1685 against James II.
A year after his marriage, Defoe took up arms as a Dissenter in Monmouth's failed rebellion against the Catholic King James II.
Defoe narrowly missed the troops and hastened to safety in London. When the king was deposed, Daniel rode with the volunteer guard of honor that escorted William of Orange and his wife Mary into the city.
While hiding as a fugitive in a churchyard after the rebellion was put down, he noticed the name Robinson Crusoe carved on a stone, and later gave it to his famous hero.
Due mainly to losses incurred by insuring ships during a war with France, Defoe faced bankruptcy in 1692. With creditors hot on his trail he fled to a debtor sanctuary in Bristol, and from there was able to negotiate terms that spared him the humiliation of debtor's prison. Within ten years he had repaid most of what he owed.
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