He fought in the campaign in the Netherlands between 1585 and 1587 under Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and was also with the earl at Tilbury in the army that protected London from the Spanish Armada in 1588. He was also occupied as a buccaneer; at the end of the 16th century he bought a ship and went buccaneering on the Spanish sea routes from the Llŷn coast, having built a residence out of the ruins of the old monastery on Bardsey Island.