[3] After a short university career at Catharine Hall, Cambridge,[4] he inherited the family estates, but showed a distinct preference for the life of court and camp.

[5] The double ambition for military and literary fame inspired his first work, which appeared in 1685 under the name La Muse de cavalier, or An Apology for such Gentlemen as make Poetry their Diversion not their Business.

General Hugh Mackay described Cutts about this time as "pretty tall, lusty and well shaped, an agreeable companion with abundance of wit, affable and familiar, but too much seized with vanity and self-conceit".

[5] Lieutenant-Colonel Cutts was one of William III's companions in the English Revolution of 1688, and in 1690 he went in command of a regiment of foot in Ireland, where he served with distinction.

He served with distinction at the Battle of the Boyne (July 1690), and at the siege of Limerick (1690) (where he was wounded), and King William created him Baron Cutts, of Gowran, in the Peerage of Ireland, on 12 December 1690.

[6] From 1694 to 1707 Lord Cutts was Governor of the Isle of Wight, including the overall command of the island's militia; he was colonel of the East Medina Regiment.

He served as a commissioner for settling the bank of Antwerp in the following year, distinguishing himself again at the famous Siege of Namur (1695), winning the name "Salamander" by his indifference to the heaviest fire.

In 1702, as a major-general, Cutts served under Marlborough in the opening campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession of 1701-1714, and at the 1702 siege of Venlo, conspicuous as usual for romantic bravery, he led the stormers at Fort Saint Michael.