Then, having finished the work to our mutual satisfaction, I locked it up, in order to peruse it at leisure, intending to have presented it to him at our arrival in England, to dispose of as he pleased, in such a way as might have conduced most to his profit; for I resolved, notwithstanding our agreement, and the obligations he was under to me, that the whole of that should be his own. But he, having been in a declining state some time before we reached shore, died the very night we landed; and his funeral falling upon me, I thought I had the greatest right to the manuscript, which, however, I had no design to have parted with; but showing it to some judicious friends, I have by them been prevailed with not to conceal from the world what may prove so very entertaining, and perhaps useful.
Giving an account of the author's birth and family--The fondness of his mother--His being put to an academy at sixteen by the advice of his friend--His thoughts of his own illiterature
I was born at Penhale, in the county of Cornwall, on the 21st day of December 1685, about four months after my father, Peter Wilkins, who was a zealous Protestant of the Church of England, had been executed by Jeffreys, in Somersetshire, for joining in the design of raising the Duke of Monmouth to the British throne. I was named, after my father and grandfather, Peter, and was my father's only child by Alice his wife, the daughter of John Capert, a clergyman in a neighbouring village. My grandfather was a shopkeeper at Newport, who, by great frugality and extraordinary application, had raised a fortune of about £160 a year in lands, and a considerable sum of ready money, all which at his death devolved upon my father, as his only child; who, being no less parsimonious than my grandfather, and living upon his own estate, had much improved it in value before his marriage with my mother; but he coming to that unhappy end, my mother, after my birth, placed all her affection upon me (her growing hope, as she called me), and used every method, in my minority, of increasing the store for my benefit.
In this manner she went on, till I grew too big, as I thought, for confinement at the apron-string, being then about fourteen years of age; and having met with so much indulgence from her, for that reason found very little or no contradiction from anybody else; so I looked on myself as a person of some consequence, and began to take all opportunities of enjoying the company of my neighbours, who hinted frequently that the restraint I was under was too great a curb upon an inclination like mine of seeing the world; but my mother, still impatient of any little absence, by excessive fondness, and encouraging every inclination I seemed to have, when she could be a partaker with me, kept me within bounds of restraint till I arrived at my sixteenth year.