Shortly before the final rupture between the king and the parliament he was elected a Fellow of Queens' College, and after being called to the bar (14 June 1642) left the country.
He spent the next four years (1642–46) travelling in France and Italy, falling in with John Evelyn and his friend Thomas Henshaw at Rome in the spring of 1645, and again at Padua and Venice in the autumn of 1645.
In 1664 he represented Queens' College, Cambridge, in the litigation respecting the election of Simon Patrick to the presidency, and in the following year was appointed one of the counsel to the university, with a fee of 40 shillings per annum.
In Trinity term of the following year he was made serjeant-at-law, presenting the king with a ring inscribed with the motto, "Rex legis tutamen", and was appointed steward of the court of common pleas, with a salary of £100.
He died heavily in debt, and his brother John, who was his executor, made persistent efforts to get in the amount due in respect of his pension (some £1,750), and succeeded in 1686 in recovering £1,456 5s., the balance being, as he plaintively puts it, abated in costs.