His father died during Charles's childhood, perhaps while he was around eight years old, and his mother then married into the distinguished Mohun family, which gave her son financial and social security.
It is not immediately clear where he went or what he did, though verses in Affaniae make reference to a time spent in Wiltshire, where he had relatives named Bellott; and also to a severe illness which he suffered about this period.
Fitzgeoffrey is mentioned by Francis Meres in his 1598 survey of contemporary English literature, Palladis Tamia, where he is admiringly described as "that high touring Falcon" for the epic quality of his verse and his patriotic choice of subject.
[1] Affaniae is a non-classical Latin word meaning "trivial, trashy talk", and the epigrams in Fitzgeoffrey's book, generally light in tone, refer to a wide range of his neighbours in Cornwall, friends in Oxford and contemporary writers whose work he admired.
Conventionally for the period Fitzgeoffrey interprets the storm providentially as a "warning piece from Heaven", but was somewhat troubled to find the only person injured in it was a maidservant who, he is at pains to point out, he has known "for this seven years... to be of sober, modest, religious conversation".