Through the kindness of Henry Salt, the traveller and antiquarian, who was ever afterwards his patron, he was engaged at Astley's amphitheatre, and his circumstances soon began to improve.
As lieutenant-general of all the horse he accompanied Lord Astley in the last campaign of the first war, and, taken prisoner at Stow-on-the-Wold, he engaged not to bear arms against parliament in the future.
Close to the town is the beautiful Elizabethan mansion of Astley Hall, which is said to have sheltered Oliver Cromwell after the battle of Preston (1648).
In the present Westminster Bridge Road was a circus, well known in the later 18th and early 19th centuries as Astley's, and near Vauxhall Bridge were the celebrated Vauxhall Gardens.
He also studied at Guy's Hospital, London (1797-1801), where he was a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper.