He early received religious impressions from the preaching of Slader, a Puritan divine for whom his father had obtained the neighbouring chapel of Knowle.
His father sent him in 1617 to King Henry VIII School, Coventry, where William Dugdale was his contemporary under James Cranford.
He obtained a lectureship at York, but after the outbreak of the First English Civil War, left it in 1642 for the vicarage of Cottingham in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
By 3 September 1651, the commissioners appointed him Provost of Trinity College Dublin, in succession to Anthony Martin who had died of the plague in 1650.
John Bridges induced him in 1655 to take the lead in forming a clerical association in which independents, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians could all meet.
[2] From this point on Winter spent his time with friends at Chester and Coventry, and with his wife's relatives in Hertfordshire and Rutland.
Three years after her death at Cottingham he married (before 1650) Elizabeth, daughter of Christopher Weaver, a woman of property, and with strong Baptist leanings.