Educated at Christ's Hospital, and Jesus College, Cambridge, studying Latin, Greek, Medicine and Metaphysics, and adopted extreme religious and political views.

Enlisted in the Fifteenth (King's) Light Dragoons, 1793, under the pseudonym "Silas Tomkyn Comberbach", but was bought out by his brothers a year later (reputedly following his discovery as an educated Gentleman, resulting from his correction of a point of Latin being discussed by two Officers as they entered the mess outside which he was on sentry duty).