According to James Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699), Clun and Charles Hart were boy players together with the King's Men in the years prior to the theatre closure.
Clun was a member of a group of English actors who performed on the Continent, mainly in The Hague and Paris, between 1644 and 1646; he was also one of the former King's Men who tried to restart the company in December 1648, despite the parliamentarian regime's hostility to theatre.
Clun may have reached the peak of his career in the title role in Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant; the King's Company played that drama for twelve days straight when they opened the lavish new Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in 1663.
Samuel Pepys, who had a strong admiration for Clun's acting, visited the spot of the murder three days after it occurred.
The poet reminds his readers that Clun's performances in female roles a quarter-century earlier had "made us weep, at seeming sorrow swell, / To see and hear like truth a fiction fell."