[2] He was committed a prisoner by Miles Corbet as a delinquent on 25 March 1643, but escaping on 21 October he joined the royalist army, becoming a member of the troop of horse which formed the king's lifeguard, under the command of Lord Bernard Stuart, afterwards Earl of Lichfield.
He was with the king’s forces in most of his movements during the ensuing two years, being present at the engagements of Cropredy Bridge, Newbury, Naseby, and at the relief of Chester, where the Earl of Lichfield was killed.
After the king's surrender, in the autumn of 1646, he applied on 17 December to be allowed to compound for his delinquency,[3] On 1 January 1648 he left London and travelled, first to Paris, and then to Rome and Venice, where he stayed till about the end of 1652, when he returned again to England.
In 1655 he was implicated in the abortive plot for restoring the monarchy, and was one of a batch of over seventy persons who were on that account arrested in the eastern counties, but were subsequently released on bond in October.
[5] These were frequently quoted by county historians, and in 1859 were edited for the Camden Society by Charles Edward Long, under the title Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War.