Thomas Crosby
Thomas Crosby (1683-1751) was a Baptist historian and part-time bookseller/schoolmaster in Southwark. He married a daughter of Benjamin Keach and was the brother-in-law of Benjamin Stinton. predecessor at Carter Lane to John Gill. He was a deacon at Carter Lane for a time (pre-1723) and then at Unicorn Yard. He operated a school in Horsleydown for forty years (c. 1709-49), and by 1740 was in partnership with John Robinson (his son-in-law) between 1740 and 1744 in a bookshop, the Globe and the Bible, that stocked “all Sorts of Books in Divinity, Law, History” and other books (White, “Thomas Crosby,” 219-34, quote from p. 222). Robinson was also a member at Unicorn Yard at that time. Crosby left Carter Lane with a group and formed the church in Unicorn Yard, but he was later dismissed from that church because of his dispute over monies owed his partner, John Robinson. The church asked him to pay the monies he owed and Crosby refused and they excommunicated him swiftly. At the same time, his wife and her sister moved to join at Maze Pond (this is 1742), but by 1743 they were judged unworthy members for spreading lies about Robinson and thus they were not given letters of dismission. Robinson was clearly in the right in the matter (he was owed £153). Robinson had been a former student of Crosby’s in the school and had married Crosby’ daughter, so the division between the two men must have been painful (White, “Thomas Crosby,” 224) in that it also involved his mother-in-law and her sister and even his own wife. Within a couple of years John Robinson left Unicorn Yard and joined at Carter Lane (December 1745). Thomas Flower left Unicorn Yard and in the first year of Josiah Thompson’s ministry, Thomas Crosby and his wife, Rebecca, and her sister, Rachel Carter, were all admitted back into the church at Unicorn Yard (White, “Thomas Crosby,” 225). He remained at Unicorn Yard till his death. See B. R. White, “Thomas Crosby,” Baptist Quarterly 21.4 (1965), 154-68.
On the last page of vol. 3 of Crosby’s History of the English Baptists (London, 1740), he included an advertisement for his school and bookshop, in partnership with John Robinson, and located in Horsleydown, Southwark, where they taught arithemetic, algebra, geometry, navigation, geography, and astronomy. The advertisement reads:
They also sell all Sorts of Articers Rules, and Mathematical Instruments, both for Sea and Land, and Cases of Instruments fitted for the Pocket. And all Sorts of Mathematical and Sea Books, Pilots, Sea Charts, both plain and Mercator, for all Parts of the known World; Paper, Paper Books, either for Shops or Compting-houses; the best Ink, Ink-Powder, and all other Stationary Wares. And also Globes of 3, 9, 12, and 16 Inches Diameter; and Weather-glasses carefully fitted up and made portable. Likewise all Sorts of Books in Divinity, Law, History, and of any Subject. And also the best Spectacles, Reading-glasses, Telescopes, Microscopes, and other Optic Glasses.
His major work is his History of the Baptists from the Restoration to the Beginning of the Reign of George I (4 vols, 1738-40). He also wrote a response to John Lewis’s History of the Rise and Progress of Anabaptism in England (1738), and The Bookkeeper’s Guide (1749).