[1] Devoting himself to the profession of arms, he became in 1591 sergeant-major-general under Sir Francis Vere in the Low Countries, and remained on active service there for nearly thirty years.

William Dillingham included in his Commentaries of Sir Francis Vere (1657) Ogle's accounts of the last charge at the battle of Nieuport, and of the parley at Ostend.

[2] During a brief stay in England in 1603, Ogle was knighted at Woodstock (10 December), but he soon returned to the Low Countries, and actively helped to recover Sluis from the Spaniards in April 1604.

That city was at the time showing those first signs of discontent with the policy of Prince Maurice and the States-General which led, a few years later, to serious internal commotion throughout the Dutch provinces.

His attitude had not, however, been sufficiently decisive, in the earlier stages of the movement, to warrant his continuance in his office, and before the year closed he was succeeded as governor by Sir Horace Vere.

The immediate business of the council was to consider England's intervention in the Thirty Years' War, but Ogle was largely occupied in surveying the fortifications on the sea-coast.

The venture proved unremunerative, and dwellers in the neighbourhood petitioned the council of York in 1634 for the arrest of Ogle and his partners, owing to their failure to complete the operations.

At the same time, "with a purpose rather to mend his fortunes than to require his attendance", Ogle received, with the approval of Lord Deputy Wentworth, a captain's commission in the army employed in Ireland.

On 11 May 1622 a grant of denization was made to Lady Elizabeth, Ogle's wife, and to John, Thomas, Cornelius, and Dorothy, his children, all of whom were born in the Low Countries.