His daughter, Elizabeth Jenings, married Robert Porteus, and was the mother of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester and London.
In 1796 he addressed letters on similar subjects to the Archbishop of Canterbury and bishops Beilby Porteus and Samuel Horsley.
He was chosen Bampton lecturer in 1785 and appointed Whitehall preacher by Bishop Beilby Porteus in 1788.
Soon after Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, took residence at Fulham Palace in 1788, he recorded that the year was remarkable "for a very severe frost the latter end of the year, by which the Thames was so completely frozen over, that Mrs. Porteus and myself walked over it from Fulham to Putney".
Philanthropists and writers such as Hannah More, Thomas Coram, Robert Raikes and Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, began to address the social ills of the day, and saw the founding of hospitals, Sunday schools and orphanages.
Lady Talbot admired his sermons, and presented him in 1800 to the living of Mickleham, Surrey, to which he was again presented in 1802 after resigning it upon his collation by Bishop Beilby Porteus to St James's, Piccadilly.
Other customers were Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), Sir Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley(1744–1824); possibly, Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of Chester and a well-known abolitionist (1731–1809); Lord Macclesfield and, possibly, Isaac Hawkins Browne.