At the age of fourteen he was taken by his father to Swarthmoor, near Ulverston, to be educated by a kinsman who was then tutor to the Fell family; the boy was then sent to a school at Hawkshead.
He now refused to study on the ground of its being a worldly occupation, and Margaret Fell employed him at Swarthmore to teach her younger children and act as her secretary.
When he was about eighteen, Caton was chosen one of the quaker preachers for the district, and in his Journal he relates that he was often met with violence by the people of the places in which he attempted to preach.
On a later journey to the Dutch Republic he was forced to take shelter in Yarmouth Roads, where he landed, and was imprisoned for nearly five months for refusing the oath of allegiance.
His principal works were: Besides the above Caton wrote a large number of small books and tracts in High and Low Dutch, including ‘Eine Beschirmung d'un schuldigen,’ 1664.