After a curacy at Madingley he held livings at Hambledon, Hampshire, Bishops Waltham and Buriton.

By Richard Neile he was appointed to the rectory of Buriton with Petersfield, Hampshire, and on 31 July 1631.

As a devoted royalist and high churchman, Lany on the outbreak of the civil wars become the subject of fierce hostility to the puritan party.

He was denounced by Prynne as "one of the professed Arminians, Laud's creatures to prosecute his designs in the university of Cambridge", who, when one Adams was brought before the authorities for preaching in favour of confession to a "priest, had united with the majority of the doctors in acquitting him".

When the parliament exercised supreme power he was deprived of all his preferments, his rectory of Buriton being sequestered "to the use of one Robert Harris, a godly and orthodox divine, and member of the Assembly of Ministers"[7] In 1643 Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester and Simeon Ashe led a visitation to the University on behalf of Parliament.