He followed his father into trade, being apprenticed in 1619 and becoming a silk merchant and freeman of the Drapers' Company in 1627.
[2] When the Civil War broke out he enlisted as a Parliamentarian and was commissioned a Colonel of horse and fought at the siege of Gloucester and in the north.
He acquired property in Suffolk, where he was a deputy lieutenant in 1643, receiver-general for the county in 1644, and a keen member of the parliamentary committee from 1643 to 1645.
When the pro-Royalist Presbyterian mobs seized Westminster in the summer of 1647, he did not join the pro-Army Independents in fleeing to asylum with the army.
In 1661 he was found guilty, but instead of a capital punishment his assets were seized and he was imprisoned in Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.