He was born at
Taunton,
Somerset, on 4 January 1684. His grandfather was the ejected vicar of
Pinhoe,
Devon, whose son, a Taunton upholsterer, married a sister of
John Rowe, ejected from a lectureship at
Westminster Abbey; Henry was the youngest of fourteen children, most of whom died young. Grounded in classics at the Taunton
grammar school, he proceeded at the age of fourteen (1698) to the Taunton
dissenting academy. Here he went through a course of philosophy and divinity under
Matthew Warren. The text-books were
David Derodon,
Franco Burgersdyck, and
Eustachius de Saint-Paul; Grove devoted himself to
Jean Leclerc,
Richard Cumberland, and
John Locke. In 1703, he moved to London to study under his cousin
Thomas Rowe, in whose academy he remained two years. Rowe was a
Cartesian; Grove became a disciple of
Isaac Newton. He studied Hebrew, and formed his style of preaching on
Richard Lucas and
John Howe. With
Isaac Watts he began a close friendship, which survived many differences of opinion. In 1705 Grove returned to Somerset, where his preaching attracted attention. He married, and probably settled for a short time at
Ilchester. Warren died on 14 June 1706. The Somerset presbyterians met to arrange for carrying on the Taunton Academy, and appointed Grove, in his twenty-third year, tutor in ethics and
pneumatology. He lived at Taunton, and took charge of the neighbouring congregations of
Hull Bishop's and
West Hatch, with James Strong. The resignation of Darch, his colleague at the academy, threw on him the conduct of the departments of mathematics and physics. Early in 1725 Stephen James, the divinity tutor, died, and Grove, without relinquishing his other work, took his place, with the assistance of his nephew,
Thomas Amory. He resigned his congregations to succeed James as minister at
Fullwood (or Pitminster), near Taunton. He declined invitations to Exeter and London. He refused to take any share in the doctrinal disputes which spread from Exeter to London in 1719, and produced the rupture at Salters' Hall. His orthodoxy was called in question by
John Ball, especially because of his discourse on saving faith (1736); but though he laid great stress on the reasonableness of Christianity, and on the moral argument for a future state, he avoided speculations on the doctrine of the Trinity. The Taunton Academy sustained its reputation during his tutorship. A list of ninety-three of his students is given by James Manning; twenty-two extra names are given in
Joshua Toulmin's manuscript list. Grove preached on 19 February 1738, and was seized the same night with a violent fever, of which he died on 27 February. He was buried at Taunton, where there is a tablet to his memory in Paul's Meeting, bearing a Latin inscription from the pen of
John Ward of Gresham College. James Strong of Ilminster and William May of London preached funeral sermons. His wife died insane in 1736; he had thirteen children, of whom five survived him. ==Works==