[1] William received his early education at country schools, and met puritan ministers Rowlandson of Bakewell and Bourn of Ashover.
On 11 June 1651 he married Agnes (baptised 19 April 1626), daughter of Peter Barker of Darley, North Yorkshire.
[3] After the Restoration and the Act of Uniformity 1662, he gave up his living and retired to Ford Hall near Chinley, in an adjacent parish.
He lived as a country gentleman, attended the parish church, but continued to preach and regularly conducted a service on Thursday evenings in his own house.
While James II's 'Declaration for Liberty of Conscience' was in force, and again through the beginning of William and Mary's reign, he was an incessant preacher.