Arthur Golding was born in East Anglia, before 25 May 1535/36, the second son of John Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halstead, Essex, an auditor of the Exchequer, and his second wife, Ursula (d. c. 1564), daughter and co-heir of William Merston of Horton in Surrey, in a family of eleven children (four from John Golding's first wife, Elizabeth). In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Golding family had prospered in the cloth trade, and by marrying heiresses had become fairly wealthy and respectable by the time of Arthur's birth, probably in London. When Golding was 11, his father died. In 1548 his half-sister Margery, by John's first wife, became the second wife of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and by 1552 his brother Henry was steward for his brother-in-law's household. Another sister Dorothy married Edmund Docwra and was mother of the soldier and statesman Henry Docwra, 1st Baron Docwra of Culmore.