Background
His father was a grocer and his mother a sister of Henry Grove.
assistant leader minister dissenting tutor
His father was a grocer and his mother a sister of Henry Grove.
He was at school under Chadwick, a local dissenting minister, and learned French at Exeter under André de Majendie, a refugee minister. On 25 March 1717 he entered, as a divinity student, the Taunton Academy, then the chief seat of culture for the dissenters of the west, under Stephen James of Fullwood, who taught theology, and Henry Grove, who taught philosophy. He received his testimonials for the ministry in 1722, and then went to London to study experimental physics in the academy of John Eames in Moorfields.
In 1725, on Stephen James"s death and before his own ordination, he acted as assistant in the ministry to Robert Darch, at Hull Bishops, and in the Taunton Academy to Grove.
Batson was more conservative in theology than Amory, and was unwilling to divide the stipend. Hence, in 1732, Amory"s friends seceded and built him a new meeting-house in Tancred Street.
On Grove"s death in 1738 Amory was placed at the head of the academy. A list of his students is given in the Monthly Repository, 1818.
There were more men of mark under Grove.
Amory"s best pupils were Thomas and John Wright of Bristol. By her he had five children, four of whom survived him. He moved to London in October 1759 to become afternoon preacher at the Old Jewry meeting-house, and in 1766 succeeded Samuel Chandler as co-pastor of the congregation with Nathaniel White.
He was elected one of Daniel Williams"s trustees in 1767 (his portrait is in Doctor Williams"s Library).
He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity Edinburgh Though thus full of preaching engagements, he was not so popular in London as he had been in Taunton.
His style was dry and disquisitional. His manner wanting in animation.
But he was a leader of the dissenting liberals, and in 1772 a strenuous supporter of the agitation for a removal of the subscription to the doctrinal articles of the established church, till 1779 demanded of all dissenting ministers by the Toleration Acting.
Amory did not live to see the bill for this new declaration pass, after being twice rejected by the lords. He died on 24 June 1774, and was buried in the hallowed ground of dissent at Bunhill Fields. The inscription on his tomb speaks of him as ‘having been employed for more than fifty years in humbly endeavouring to discover the religion of Jesus Christ in its origin and purity.’.