Of Adam Orleton's background and early education we know virtually nothing. That by 1301 he was both beneficed and a master of arts points to his having been born about 1275 – certainly no later than the early 1280s. Even his place of birth is uncertain, though John Leland, writing in the sixteenth century, may have been accurate in his bald assertion that Adam was born in Hereford, rather than his name-place Orleton, a township close to the Mortimer seat at Wigmore. In a number of documents of the early fourteenth century he is called either ‘M. Adam de Orleton seu de Hereford’ or, more simply, ‘M. Adam de Hereford’, descriptions which lend support to Leland's opinion.

Orletons were certainly conspicuous in the affairs of Hereford at about this time, but the name is also to be found in some other towns, notably Ludlow.

From Orleton's subsequent association with the two Roger Mortimers, uncle and nephew, of Chirk and Wigmore respectively, the editor of his Hereford register conjectured that he was a protégé of that family and subsequently took the hypothesis for fact. It is true that Orleton's sympathetic relationship with these men, which brought him little but misfortune, argues either remarkable loyalty or strong identity of interest. The latter is arguably nearer the mark, but may have been a later development.