His mother, Ann Perfrement, was a native of Norfolk, and descended from a family of French Protestants banished from France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

He was the youngest of two sons.

His brother, John Thomas, who was endowed with various and very remarkable talents, died at an early age in Mexico.

Both the brothers had the advantage of being at some of the first schools in Britain.

The last at which they were placed was the Grammar School at Norwich, to which town their father came to reside at the termination of the French war.