During the outset of the English Civil War, a series of morning lectures were given by members of the clergy at Westminster Abbey.

He was admitted student on 24 March 1648, just before the parliamentary visitation, which removed Underwood, his tutor, substituting William Finmore (afterwards archdeacon of Chester).

[3] While at home on leave in January 1649 he saw Charles I going by water from Whitehall to Westminster daily to his trial, once speaking to his father.

Of Charles's execution he gave an eye-witness account, including "[I] can truly say with a sad heart...there was such a Grone by the Thousands then present, as I never heard before & desire I may never hear again.

On the introduction of Francis Palmer, afterwards professor of moral philosophy at Oxford, he was engaged in September 1653 by John Puleston, justice of the common pleas, as tutor to his sons at Emeral, Flintshire, and preacher at Worthenbury Chapel, in the parish of Bangor-on-Dee, same county.

He appears to have sympathized with the royalist rising under Sir George Booth in August 1659, and welcomed the restoration of Charles II in 1660.

He surrendered his house and annuity for £100, to avoid litigation, and left Worthenbury for Broad Oak, Flintshire, a property settled upon his wife.

On 15 March 1665 he was cited to Malpas, Cheshire, for baptising one of his own children; at the end of the month he was treated as a layman, and was made sub-collector of tax for the township of Iscoyd.

All this time he was a regular attendant at parish churches, his habit being to stand throughout the service; he forbore communicating simply on the ground of the kneeling posture.

[3] In February 1668 he preached by request in the parish church of Betley, Staffordshire, a circumstance of which accounts were reported in the House of Commons.

Not till the short-lived indulgence of 1672 did he resume his public ministry in his licensed house, still avoiding encroachment on church hours.

Funeral sermons were preached at Broad Oak by Francis Tallents of Shrewsbury, James Owen of Oswestry, and Matthew Henry.

[3] A marble tablet was erected to his memory in St. Alkmund's, Whitchurch, bearing a Latin inscription by John Tylston, M.D., his son-in-law.

In 1844 a tablet bearing an English version of the epitaph was placed in the north aisle of the church, the original monument being transferred to Whitewell Chapel, near Broad Oak.