[1] Bott subsequently took Anglican orders, being ordained deacon in York by William Dawes in November 1722, and priest in August 1723, in Norwich.
[4] According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, in 1734 Francis Long gave Bott the rectory of Spixworth, Norfolk, but there is doubt over the date.
[4][7] In 1747 Rebecca Harbord presented him to the living of Edgefield, Norfolk, in gratitude for his hindering an unacceptable marriage in the family.
[9] In 1724 he published a discourse[10] to prove that "peace and happiness in this world" was "the immediate design of Christianity"; and a defence of this work followed in 1730.
In 1725 he attacked William Wollaston's personal way of deducing morality from truth, in an anonymous work The principal and peculiar notion advanc'd in a late book, intitled, The religion of nature delineated; consider'd and refuted; he is considered, however, to have misinterpreted Wollaston, as an anonymous opponent pointed out.
He criticised William Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses, for making morality dependent on the command of a superior being.
He left one son, Edmund Bott, afterwards of Christchurch, Hampshire, who was an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge,[1][17] and 'author of a valuable Work on the Poor Laws'.