At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S. Tendall of Lynn.  The articles, however, did not bind him very fast, for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of his master and did not see him again for eight years.  These details exhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.

At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of the great soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France.  The narrative is not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, in a month or so the services of John were found to be of no value, and he was sent back to his friends, who on his return generously gave him ten shillings (out of his own estate) to be rid of him.  He is next heard of enjoying his liberty at Paris and making the acquaintance of a Scotchman named David Hume, who used his purse—­ten shillings went a long ways in those days—­and in return gave him letters of commendation to prefer him to King James.  But the boy had a disinclination to go where he was sent.  Reaching Rouen, and being nearly out of money, he dropped down the river to Havre de Grace, and began to learn to be a soldier.

Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV., nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared.  But he was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time in possession of that soldier.  Our adventurer not only makes no reference to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor to Henry, but he does not tell who held Paris when he visited it.  Apparently state affairs did not interest him.  His reference to a “peace” helps us to fix the date of his first adventure in France.  Henry published the Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and on the 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with Philip II. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France.  The Duc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith’s “Duke of Mercury” in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises in the League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanish protection.  However, fortune was against him and he submitted to Henry in February, 1598, with no good grace.  Looking about for an opportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to the Emperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of his French followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise the siege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000 men.

Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace, he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving and fighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the best market, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked and hewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for three or four years.  At the end of that time he bethought himself that he had not delivered his letters to Scotland.  He embarked at Aucusan for Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained by illness in the “holy isle” in Northumberland, near Barwick.  On his recovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment from the Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his way as a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.