In 1572 he joined an English regiment on active service in the Low Countries, where he met George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard.
To this he wrote an interesting preface addressed to William Fleetwood, recorder of London, to whom he claimed to be related, in which he criticizes contemporary drama.
[1] In 1582 Whetstone published his Heptameron of Civil Discourses, a collection of tales which includes The Rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra.
[1] The Puritan spirit was now widespread in England, and Whetstone followed its dictates in his prose tract A Mirour for Magestrates (1584), which in a second edition was called A Touchstone for the Time.
His other works are a collection of military anecdotes entitled The Honourable Reputation of a Souldier (1585); a political tract, the English Myrror (1586), numerous elegies on distinguished persons, and The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587).