His eight siblings included the writer Dorothy Durie and the poet Edward King, whose early death inspired John Milton to write the poem "Lycidas".
His father, who emigrated from Yorkshire to Ireland in the 1580s, became an indispensable Crown servant and a major landowner with estates in twenty-one counties.
He was a member of the Council of State in 1653 and sat in the First Protectorate Parliament for the counties of Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim in 1654.
He had a reputation as a political moderate, who was willing to work with any faction which would safeguard the interest of the Protestant party in Ireland.
He married secondly Sophia Zouch, daughter of Sir Edward Zouch, Knight Marshal of the King's Household and Dorothea Silking, a Danish royal lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Denmark, and widow of Edward Cecil, 1st Viscount Wimbledon, by whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Barnardiston, 2nd Baronet.