Although Morley inherited property from his father, including the manor of Tile in Old Windsor, Berkshire, he chose to become a lawyer, following his father and elder brother into the Inner Temple. He sold Tile in 1606, and that same year married a widow who brought him a lease of episcopal land near Chichester, in Sussex. Soon thereafter he secured a reversion to the office of chirographer in Common Pleas, the official responsible for engrossing fines, a similar grant having been previously acquired by his father.
A stepson of Sir Edward Caryll, a leading Catholic, this Member was apparently not the Edward Morley convicted of recusancy at the Middlesex quarter sessions in 1609, who paid fines on lands in Holme in northern Lincolnshire from May 1610.
Arundel lay only about seven miles from Halnaker, the family seat, but Morley probably owed his return there in 1614 to the Howards. Caryll had been described in the 1580s as the Sussex ‘steward and doer’ to Philip Howard, earl of Arundel, and had remained connected with the family. In 1605 Caryll was appointed trustee for Philip’s son, Thomas, and in the same year named Thomas’ uncle Lord William Howard, together with Morley’s elder brother, as trustees for his own estate.
Morley became recorder of Chichester sometime after the death of the previous incumbent, Adrian Stoughton*, who died in October 1614. However, as the corporation noted in 1626, he was subsequently sacked for absenteeism. The date of his dismissal is not known, but it must have occurred by 1618, when the corporation’s new charter was issued, as Thomas Whatman* claimed he was the first recorder to hold office in accordance with its provisions.
In 1617 Morley, together with Fraunceys, became trustees for Sir John Leedes*, a chronically indebted Sussex courtier.