He was educated at schools in Southwick, Hampshire (to 1689), and Norwich (1691–2), before moving on (1692) to the London dissenting academy of Thomas Rowe.
[1] In 1734, after hesitation, Say accepted the care of the congregation at Long Ditch (now Princes Street), Westminster, which had been without a pastor since the death of Edmund Calamy in 1732.
), edited by John Duncombe, are two letters by Say, and a reprint of his "Character" of Bridget Bendish, which first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (1760, p. 423).
[1] The Say Papers, edited in the Monthly Repository, 1809–10, by Robert Aspland, were from manuscripts then in the possession of Say's grandson, Samuel Say Toms.
Her uncle, Nathaniel Carter (1635–1722) of Great Yarmouth, married a granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, and founded a significant dissenting trust.