Childhood and Youth The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] to an earlier Robert who lived in the service of Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle, and died in 1746.

His eldest son, Thomas, "was granted a lease for three lives of the little inn, in the little hamlet of East Woodyates and parish of Pentridge, nine miles south-west of Salisbury on the road to Exeter." Robert, born in 1749, the son of this Thomas, and grandfather of the poet, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and rose to be principal in the Bank Stock Office.

At the age of twenty-nine he married Margaret Tittle, a lady born in the West Indies and possessed of West Indian property.

He is described by Mrs Orr as an able, energetic, and worldly man.

He lived until his grandson was twenty-one years old.