He married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant, in 1684 and, over a fifty-year marriage, had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Not unlike Robinson Crusoe, young Daniel had other ideas and, at the age of eighteen, left school and went into business, eventually becoming a merchant, dealing at various times in hosiery, wool, and wine. Educated at Charles Morton's Academy for dissenters in London, his father expected Defoe to go into the ministry. The Foes barely escaped destruction from the fire, and when Daniel was only ten, his mother passed away. The Foes (Daniel would later change his surname to "Defoe," a more aristocratic name he linked to the De Baux Faux family) were Protestant dissenters, neither following Catholicism nor the official Church of England, and thus a persecuted minority during Great Britain's turbulent seventeenth century.ĭefoe lived through a remarkably eventful era, having been born shortly after the death of Oliver Cromwell, and a few years before both the Great Plague (1665) and Great Fire of London (1666). His father, James, was a tallow chandler, or candle merchant, and a member of the Butcher's Company, a professional guild. Giles Cripplegate, London, to Alice and James Foe. Daniel Defoe was born around 1660 (the exact date is uncertain) in the parish of St.
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