[1] Following his father's death in 1620, Priestley inherited Camfield House in Essendon;[2] then, in 1627, he acquired the manor of Bedwell Lowthes.
The family lived in a house known as Wyldehelle or Weald Hill, on the border of Hatfield and Essendon.
[4] In 1647, during the Long Parliament, William Priestley was appointed as a Recruiter MP for St Mawes in Cornwall, to fill the vacancy caused by the expulsion of the Royalist Dr George Parry who had been expelled in January 1644.
Priestley himself was cast out of the House, along with his colleague, the Parliamentarian Richard Erisey, during Pride's Purge, December 1648.
[5] There is a large monument to him, on the south aisle wall of the parish church.