Brook Taylor was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, England, on August 18, 1865, the oldest child of a family considered part of the minor nobility. His mother, Olivia, was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest. His father, John Taylor of Bifrons House, Kent, was a strict parent who alienated Taylor from the family when Taylor married a woman without his father's approval in 1721. The estrangement ended after two years when Taylor's wife died in childbirth and he returned to the family home. Taylor remarried in 1725, this time to a woman who enjoyed the family's approval. Unfortunately, Taylor's second wife also died in childbirth in 1730, leaving him to raise their daughter, Elizabeth, alone. Following his father's death in 1729, Taylor inherited the family estate in Kent.

After being tutored at home in mathematics and the classics, Taylor was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1709, where he completed a Bachelor of Laws degree...