According to some accounts, he was the heir to a small freehold,
while according to others he was a poor scholar, {6} and had to
struggle with poverty from his earliest years. He entered as a
sizar at Christ College, Cambridge, in May, 1579, and subsequently
removed to St. John's, taking his degree of B.A. in 1582-3. It is
believed that he commenced M.A. in 1586; but on this point there
appears to be some confusion in the records of the University. The
statement usually made that he was expelled for marrying contrary
to the statutes, is incorrect, as he was never a Fellow of the
University, and therefore could not be prejudiced by taking such a
step.

At the time when Lee invented the Stocking Frame he was officiating
as curate of Calverton, near Nottingham; and it is alleged by some
writers that the invention had its origin in disappointed
affection. The curate is said to have fallen deeply in love with a
young lady of the village, who failed to reciprocate his
affections; and when he visited her, she was accustomed to pay much
more attention to the process of knitting stockings and instructing
her pupils in the art, than to the addresses of her admirer. This
slight is said to have created in his mind such an aversion to
knitting by hand, that he formed the determination to invent a
machine that should supersede it and render it a gainless
employment. For three years he devoted himself to the prosecution
of the invention, sacrificing everything to his new idea. At the
prospect of success opened before him, he abandoned his curacy, and
devoted himself to the art of stocking making by machinery. This
is the version of the story given by Henson {7} on the authority of
an old stocking-maker, who died in Collins's Hospital, Nottingham,
aged ninety-two, and was apprenticed in the town during the reign