Born on 16 September 1791, he was son of John Martin of 112 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, London.
In 1836 he was appointed librarian to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, and settled at Froxfield, in the parish of Eversholt, nearby.
He visited nearly every church in Bedfordshire, and wrote a description of each in a series of articles which appeared in the Bedford Times and Northampton Mercury.
It related to the fabricated Popish Plot, and the assertion that the early Whig William Russell, Lord Russell interfered to prevent the mitigation of the punishment of being hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason, in the case of Viscount Stafford, on the presentation of the petition of Sheriffs Slingsby Bethel and Henry Cornish to the House of Commons on 23 December 1680.
His eldest son, John Edward Martin, librarian to the Inner Temple, died on 20 July 1893, aged 71.