[2] On the accession of Queen Mary I of England in 1553, he was forced to leave the university, and found occupation as clerk to a counsellor-at-law.

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, five years later, he resumed his theological studies, and was soon afterwards elected a fellow of St John's and later of Trinity College, Cambridge.

[3] In 1564, Cartwright opposed Thomas Preston in a theological disputation held on the occasion of Elizabeth's state visit, and in the following year brought attention to the Puritan attitude on church ceremonial and organization.

He returned to England in 1572, and might have become professor of Hebrew at Cambridge but for his expressed sympathy with the notorious "Admonition to the Parliament" by John Field and Thomas Wilcox.

[3] In 1576 Cartwright visited and organized the Huguenot churches of the Channel Islands, and after revising the Rhenish version of the New Testament, again settled as pastor at Antwerp, declining the offer of a chair at the University of St Andrews.