Some years later he took his family to Geesings, and on the Royal Declaration of Indulgence (15 March 1672) he obtained a license (2 April) for himself as a 'presbyterian teacher,' and for his house as a place of worship.
[3] For twenty-four years he continued his ministrations gratuitously, living in good style as a country gentleman, and on excellent terms with Cowper, the vicar of Wickhambrook.
He was never molested, and even when he opened under his own roof, prior to the Toleration Act 1689, an academy for training young men in philosophy and theology, he escaped the interferences with which other nonconformist tutors were visited.
Edmund Calamy, who was his pupil in philosophy (1686–8), gives a list, not exhaustive, of twelve who were his contemporaries, including his classmate Timothy Goodwin, then studying with a view to medicine, eventually promoted to the archbishopric of Cashel.
Cradock drew up his reasons for believing that the oath referred simply to lectures in order to a degree.
Calamy speaks very highly of the moral effect of Cradock's discipline, which was wise and friendly, and not too severe.
Provision having been made on an adjoining estate in 1695 for the performance of dissenting worship at Wickhambrook, Cradock moved in 1696 to Bishop's Stortford, where he continued to preach, and soon became pastor of a congregational church in the neighbouring village of Stansted Mountfitchet (meeting-house erected about 1698).