Godwin was born in Wisbech in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, to John and Anne Godwin. Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class. Godwin's parents adhered to a strict form of Calvinism. Godwin was the seventh of his parent's thirteen children. Godwin's mother came from a wealthy family but due to her uncle's frivolities the family wealth was squandered. Fortunately for the family her father was a successful merchant involved in the Baltic Sea trade. Godwin's father, a Nonconformist minister in Guestwick in Norfolk, died young, and never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age.