Benjamin Brook

Benjamin Brook (1776-1848) was born near Huddersfield, Yorkshire. He spent his early years attending the Independent congregation at Holmfield, under the ministry of Robert Gallond. In 1797 Brook entered Rotherham College as a ministerial student, leaving in 1801 to assume the pastorate of the Independent congregation at Tutbury, where he would remain until 1830.  He then retired to Birmingham, and spent his remaining years in literary and historical endeavors. His major academic interest was Puritan and nonconformist history, which led to his most important publication, The Lives of the Puritans: Containing a Biographical Account of Those Divines who Distinguished Themselves in the Cause of Religious Liberty, from the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth, to the Act of Uniformity in 1662 (3 vols,  (1813). He also published Appeal to Facts to Justify Dissenters in their Separation from the Established Church (1806; 3rd ed. 1815) and Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas Cartwright (1845). At his death he was working on a history of the Puritans in New England.