[1] He was educated at Dorchester Grammar School and as a student of New Inn Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated on 23 April 1651, and graduated B.A.
After his appointment as an evangelist, he preached at Melcombe Regis, Radipole, and other areas in Dorset.
Never episcopally ordained, he was approved by Oliver Cromwell's Commission of Triers in 1658 and appointed Vicar of Winterborne Whitechurch.
[2] The report of his interview in 1661 with Gilbert Ironside the elder, his diocesan, according to Alexander Gordon writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, shows him to have been an Independent.
A younger son, Matthew Wesley, remained a nonconformist, became a London apothecary, and died on 10 June 1737, leaving a son, Matthew, in India; he provided for some of his brother Samuel's daughters.