After seven years at Cambridge, he studied theology at the house of Herbert Palmer, vicar of Ashwell, Hertfordshire.
He was released with other prisoners on 14 August 1649 as a thanksgiving for Michael Jones's victory at the Battle of Rathmines.
He was concerned with his brother-in-law, William Jenkin, and others, in the plot to support Charles in Scotland, for which Christopher Love was executed on 22 August 1651, and escaped to Holland, where he was chosen pastor of the English church in Rotterdam.
Here he became acquainted with scholars, and took pains to encourage Edmund Castell's Lexicon Heptaglotton and Brian Walton's polyglot bible.
In 1658 Charles II addressed a letter to him, requesting Cawton to defend him among the Dutch ministers.