Best studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1609-10 and M.A. in 1613. He was made a fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge in 1617. In April 1617 he inherited the family manor at Elmswell, East Riding of Yorkshire, a part of which he sold to finance his travels in Europe from the 1620s to the 1630s, as an adventurer and mercenary who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Lützen (1632). He then returned to England and fought in the Parliamentary Army during 1644 - the year King Charles I lost control of Yorkshire.