Having first played at Bath Heartwell in the Prize, Terry left Wyatt to join (in 1803 to 1805) the company at Sheffield under the management of William Macready the Elder.
His first appearance was as Tressel in Richard III and was followed by other parts, Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII and Edmund in King Lear.
On the breaking up in 1806 of Kemble's company, he went to Liverpool and made a success which recommended him to Henry Siddons, who brought him out in Edinburgh, 29 November 1809, as Bertrand in William Dimond's The Foundling of the Forest.
[2] He created some original characters in lesser plays, including Count Salerno in Eyre's Look at Home, 15 August 1812, based on John Moore's Zeluco.
[4] In 1815, meanwhile, he had, by permission of the Covent Garden management, supported Sarah Siddons in her farewell engagement in Edinburgh, where he played Macbeth, 'The Stranger' [sic] in Douglas, Wolsey, King John, and the Earl of Warwick.
Having quarrelled with the management of Covent Garden on a question of terms, Terry made his first appearance at Drury Lane, 16 October 1822, speaking an occasional address by Colman and playing Sir Peter.
[6] At the Haymarket, 7 July, he was the first Admiral Franklin in James Kenney's Sweethearts and Wives, and on 27 September the first Dr. Primrose in a new adaptation by T. Dibdin of the Vicar of Wakefield.
The season 1823–4 at Drury Lane saw him as Bartolo in Fazio, Lord Sands, Menenius in Coriolanus, and as the first Antony Foster in a version of Kenilworth, 5 January 1824, and the following season as Orozembo in Pizarro, Justice Woodcock in Love in a Village, Adam in As you like it, Moustache in Henri Quatre, Hubert in King John, and Rochfort in an alteration of the Fatal Dowry.
In 1825, in association with his friend Frederick Henry Yates, he became manager of the Adelphi, opening, 10 October, in a piece called Killigrew.
Scott consulted Terry on literary questions, especially on plays, and seems to have trusted him with the Doom of Devorgoil, with a view to adapting it for the stage.
How many of the numerous stage adaptations of Scott that saw the light between the appearance of Waverley and the death of the actor are by Terry cannot be said, many of them being anonymous and unprinted.