He was educated at Eton College and admitted scholar at King's College, Cambridge, on 25 August 1559, becoming a fellow on 26 August 1562.
[1][2] When Richard Shacklock published a translation of a letter written by the Portuguese bishop, Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca, urging Queen Elizabeth to return to Catholicism,[3] Hartwell, a Protestant, responded with an English translation of Walter Haddon's Latin riposte to Osorio.
[4] Describing himself as "an Englishe man borne, one of the quenes majesties suppliauntes, and enfourmed in my countrie fashions", Hartwell accused the exiled Shacklock of "grosse ignorance of our English customes".
[3] Four Latin lines by Thomas Newton in his Illustrium aliquot Anglorum Encomia (1589), addressed to Abraham Hartwell the younger, speak of the elder as a distinguished poet lately dead.
[1] Some verses found in Robert Hacomblene's Commentarii in Aristotelis Ethica manuscript in King's College Library have also been ascribed to Hartwell, although Charles Henry Cooper in his Athenae Cantabrigienses disagreed with the attribution.