[1] Born about 1602, the son of a clergyman in Bedfordshire, he entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1619 and graduated BA in 1622, moving to Hart Hall where he gained an MA in 1624.
[2] In 1642, as England sank into civil war, he was curate of the prosperous parish of Petworth in Sussex, where the Bishop of Chichester, Dr Henry King was rector.
Baal's priest, bald-pate, carry home your consecrated bread and sop your pottage!” Others thronged about him, laid hands on him, reviled him and laboured to hinder those who were willing to kneel, insomuch that God's holy ordinances were much dishonoured and many good Christians affrighted from the Holy Communion that day ....
When tracked down by his opponents, for some days he hid in a hollow tree where his landlady brought him food on the pretence of gathering firewood.
[4] He held incumbencies at St Nicholas Olave in the City of London and then at three parishes in Sussex: Ford in 1662; Climping in 1662; and Selsey in 1667.