Considered eccentric, he encountered personal troubles before finally losing his living as a non-juror after the Glorious Revolution.
After receiving some preliminary instruction from William Hayter at Exeter, he entered Balliol College, Oxford, as a commoner in Lent term 1651, was admitted probationer fellow of that house 29 November 1655, having taken his B.A.
He resigned his fellowship 1 November 1659, in which year he succeeded his father in the rectory of East Allington.
[1] He had written royalist poetry, and was taken prisoner by Major John Blackmore, a Parliamentarian soldier who had been in command of Exeter Castle and sat as MP for East Looe in Cornwall.
He defended innate ideas, against John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in another work from 1697.