The son of John Martin (died 1767), a publican and grazier, by his wife Mary King, he was born at Spalding, Lincolnshire, on 15 March 1741. Soon after his mother"s death in 1756 he went as office-boy to an attorney at Holbeach, but became depressed.
He was educated at Gosberton, and then at Stamford under Doctor Newark.
In 1760 Martin moved to London to sit under John Gill. He was called successively to Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, Shepshed in Leicestershire where he was an itinerant preacher, and in 1773 to Grafton Street Chapel in London. His ministry was successful, and a new meeting-house was built in Keppel Street, near Bedford Square, in 1795.
In April 1814, Martin resigned his pulpit in consequence of a stroke of palsy.
He died in London on 23 April 1820, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. In 1761 Martin married a Mission Jessup, daughter of a farmer near Sleaford.
She died in 1765.
