[Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. iv. 81, 136; Calendars of State Papers; Panzani's Memoirs, 178, 179; Cat. of printed Books in Brit. Mus.; A cunning Plot to divide and destroy the Parliament and the city of London, 1643.]
BROOK, BENJAMIN (1776–1848), nonconformist divine and historian, was born in 1776 at Nether Thong, near Huddersfield. As a youth he was admitted to membership in the independent church at Holmfield, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Robert Gallond. In 1797 he entered Rotherham College as a student for the ministry. In 1801 he became the first pastor of the congregational church at Tutbury, Staffordshire. Here he pursued his studies, with great research, into puritan and nonconformist history and biography, and published the works on which his historical repute chiefly rests. Resigning his ministerial duties in 1830, from failing health, he went to reside at Birmingham, still continuing his favourite studies, and publishing some of their fruits. He was a member of the educational board of Springhill College, opened August 1838. At the time of his death he was collecting materials for a history of puritans who emigrated to New England. He died at the Lozells, near Birmingham, on 5 Jan. 1848, in his 73rd year. He is said to have been one of the last who retained among the congregationalists the old ministerial costume of shorts and black silk stockings. He published:
- 'Appeal to Facts to justify Dissenters in their Separation from the Established Church,' 2nd ed. 1806, 8vo (3rd ed. 1815, 8vo, with title 'Dissent from the Church of England justified by an Appeal to Facts').
- 'The Lives of the Puritans … from the Reformation under Q. Elizabeth to the Act of Uniformity, in 1662,' 1813, 3 vols. 8vo (a most careful and valuable collection, from original sources).
- 'The Reviewer reviewed,' 1815, 8vo (in answer to an article in the 'Christian Observer ' on the 'Lives').
- 'The History of Religious Liberty from the first Propagation of Christianity in Britain to the death of George III,' 1820, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas Cartwright, B.D. … including the principal ecclesiastical movements in the reign of Q. Elizabeth,' 1845, 8vo (this is inferior to his 'Lives;' Brook was better in biography than in general history).
[Congregational Year-Book, 1848, p. 214; Bennett's Hist. of Dissenters, 1839, p. 161 private information.]
BROOK, CHARLES (1814–1872), philanthropist, was born 18 Nov. 1814, in Upperhead Row, Huddersfield. His father, James Brook, was member of the large banking and cotton-spinning firm of Jonas Brook Brothers at Meltham. Charles Brook lived with his father, who in 1831 had moved to Thornton Lodge; and by 1840 he became partner in the firm. He made many improvements in the machinery, and showed remarkable busines talents. He strenuously refused to let his goods measure a less number of yards than was indicated by his labels, and he was bent on promoting the welfare of the two thousand hands in his employ. He knew them nearly all by sight, went to see them when ill, and taught their children in the Sunday school which he superintended for years (Huddersfield Examiner, vol. xx. No. 1471). He laid out a park-like retreat, which he himsel planned, for his workpeople at Meltham, and built them a handsome dining-hall and concert-room, with a spacious swimming-bath underneath. His best-known gift is the Convalescent Home at Huddersfield, in the grounds of which again he was his own landscape gardener, the whole costing 40,000l. He was constantly erecting or enlarging churches, schools, infirmaries, cottages, curates' houses, &c., in Huddersfield, Meltham, and the district; and on purchasing Enderby Hall, Leicestershire, in 1865, with large estates adjoining, costing 150,000l., he rebuilt Enderby church and the stocking-weavers' unsanitary cottages. He died at Enderby Hall, of pleurisy and bronchitis, 10 July 1872, aged nearly 58. A portrait of him, by Samuel Howell, is in the Huddersfield Convalescent Home.
In 1860 Brook married Miss Hirst, a daughter of John Sunderland Hirst of Huddersfield. In politics he was a conservative. Mrs. Brook survived him; but he left no family.
[Huddersfield Weekly News, vol. v. Nos. 248, 249; Huddersfield Examiner, vol.xx. Nos. 1471, 1477; Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, Nos. 1538, 1539, 1542; Times, 12 July 1872, p. 12, col. 1.]
BROOK, DAVID (d. 1558), judge, was of a west-country family living at Glastonbury, Somersetshire. His father, John Brook, was also a lawyer and of the degree of serjeant-at-law; he died on Christmas day 1525, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, having been principal seneschal of the neighbouring monastery. David was appointed reader at the Inner Temple in the autumn of 1534, and again in Lent term 1540, when he was also treasurer, and in 1541 he became governor. He was recorder of Bristol (1541–9) and M.P. for the city (1542–4). On 3 Feb. 1547, the first week of
