Born at Boords Hill, Holms Dale, Sussex, he was educated at the University of Oxford, and was admitted a member of the Carthusian order while under age.

In 1521 he was dispensed from religion in order that he might act as suffragan bishop of Chichester, though he never actually filled the office, and in 1529 he was freed from his monastic vows, not being able to endure, as he said, "the rugorosite off your relygyon".

He subsequently visited the universities of Orléans, Poitiers, Toulouse, Montpellier and Wittenberg, saw the practice of surgery at Rome, and went on pilgrimage with others of his nation to Compostela in Galicia.

[1] Cromwell set him at liberty, and after entertaining him at his house at Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire, seems to have entrusted him with a mission to find out the state of public feeling abroad with regard to the English king.

Thomas Hearne (Benedictus Abbas, i. p. 52) says that he went round like a quack doctor to country fairs, and therefore rashly supposed him to have been the original Merry Andrew.