After holding a benefice in the Diocese of Bath and Wells for about ten years, he was appointed to his father's old living, St. Mary's, Newington, and to the afternoon lectureship at St. Michael's, Crooked Lane.
A sermon preached by him at Newington and at St. Michael's (26 October and 2 November of the same year) on 2 Corinthians 5:11 was said to contain reflections on the King's courts of justice, and an accusation was laid against him before the Dean of Arches.
In order to vindicate himself he printed this sermon, which certainly does not appear to contain any such reflections, with a dedication, dated 10 December 1684, to Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester, formerly his diocesan in Somerset.
Refusing to take the oaths on the accession of William III and Mary II, he lost his preferment, and became the minister of a Jacobite congregation meeting in St. Dunstan's Court, Fleet Street.
In the dedication of this discourse he describes himself as M. B. Indignus έν τἣ θλ ίψει ὰξεφὸςλ κὰι σννγκοινωνός, probably in reference to his sufferings as a Jacobite preacher, the sermon itself being on Ephesians 4:1.