Following the Royalist defeat, in September 1646 he petitioned to compound on articles of surrender at Oxford, and was fined £728 by the Parliamentarians.
[1] He was on the list of proposed Knights of the Royal Oak, with an income estimated at £1,000 per year in 1660.
In 1661 he was returned as the Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds on the interest of his father-in-law, Sir Henry Crofts.
In July 1667, he was authorised to act as receiver of revenue in Norfolk and Huntingdonshire and was given a post in customs in September.
After the fall of Clarendon in 1667, Poley was appointed to the committees to inquire into the miscarriage of the Second Anglo-Dutch War and to inspect the militia laws.