 Middleton was just five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience which must have informed and perhaps incited his repeated satire at the expense of the legal profession.Middleton attended Queen's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate.Before he left Oxford (sometime in 1600 or 1601), he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles.