The daughter of the London merchant Henry Dewell (d. in or after 1655), no details of Elizabeth's life prior to her marriage to John in or before September 1641 (shortly after his release from prison) are known.
[1] Already involved in London separatist circles at the time of her marriage, she was one of the thirteen women and sixteen men arrested in September 1641 for their attendance at John Spilsbury's Baptist congregation in Stepney.
During John's time serving as a captain in Baron Brooke's regiment he was captured at the Battle of Brentford (1642) by royalists and threatened with execution.
After John's release she spent a few quieter months in Boston, Lincolnshire while he was serving with the army of the Eastern Association, though he became more and more disaffected with the dominant parliamentary factions.
Heavily pregnant, she joined him in Newgate Prison in August 1645 when he was sent there for attacking William Lenthall and it was there that their daughter Elizabeth was born and (maybe against the couple's wishes) baptised.