Benjamin Brook, Tutbury, to John Sutcliff, Olney (”Fav.r by M.r Fletcher”), 23 December 1808.

Tutbury Dec 23—1808

Dear Sir

         A short time ago Mr Abraham, your acquaintance, called upon me with your kind respects, for which I am much obliged to you. In our conversation I was led to say, that I am compiling a biographical work, which, if it should ever be published, may perhaps be entitled, The Memorial of the Puritans. Having told me that you were a great Collector of such old and scarce publications as I appeared to want, I requested him to mention to you what I am about, and make some inquiries. But by the favour of B.r Fletcher, I wish to say something more on the same subject. I am collecting materials for a work of the above description, and hitherto have been tolerably successful. It is designed to give a full and circumstantial account of the lives, sufferings, deaths, & printed works of the Puritans, and will perhaps include all such as died from the rise of Puritanism in 1556, to the coming out of the Act of Uniformity in 1662, so far as accounts can be collected.

         I wish you, Sir, to say whether you think such a publication is likely to meet the approbation of the public; and more especially, whether you think it is likely to be useful. If you approve of the object I have in view, be so good as give me any hints which, you think, may prove useful in the compilation. And as you have been in the habit of collecting scarce articles, if you have any thing that will be of advantage, and you feel disposed to favour the undertaking, I shall be very much obliged to you for the use of them. I have given Mr Fletcher a list of Books, to make some inquiry of a Bookseller, part of which I am anxious to obtain. If you have got any of them, or any others that will afford me any assistance, the loan or purchase of them will be esteemed a very great favour. The works which I principally want, are Clark’s Lives, 2 Vols; Clark’s Mirror; Fuller’s Worthies; Fuller’s Church Hist; Crosby’s Hist. of the Baptists; and Part of a Register. Do you know, Sir, whether Robinson’s Hist. of Baptism, gives an account of the lives & sufferings of the Baptists, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, King James I or Charles I?  Can you inform me what is the most likely place to obtain such Books as I want?  Do you know where is the manuscript so often referred to in Vol. I of Neal’s History? Of whom had I best inquire?  If possible, I must obtain the use of it. Thus, Sir, I have stated my present persuits [sic] and necessities. I have already collected and transcribed upwards of fifty lives; and some of them are at considerable length, others are somewhat shorter.

         I wish the Lord may abundantly bless you in your own soul, and in your public work; and make your last days appear but days. Your kindly answer to this hasty scribble, by B.r Fletcher, will very much oblige your 

                                                               Most Af.t Sert

                                                                                 In Christ

                                                                                                   B Brook

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 138-39 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 373, fol. 256a, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Benjamin Brook (1776-1848), Independent minister at Tutbury, 1801-30; Mr. Fletcher was the Baptist minister at Burton-on-Trent. He retired c. 1808 and was replaced by John Smith; Thomas Abraham joined Sutcliff’s congregation at Olney in 1794, coming from the church at Carleton, to which he returned in August 1818. The titles mentioned in this letter are as follows:  The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History:  Divided into Two Parts:  the First, Containing the Life of Our Blessed Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ; With the Lives of the Ancient Fathers, School-Men, First-Reformers and Sovereign Princes (1675) and A Mirror or Looking-Glass both for Saints and Sinners (1671) by Samuel Clark (1599-1682); The History of the Worthies of England (1662) and The Church-History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year M.DC.XLVIII (1655)  by Thomas Fuller (1608-61); The History of the English Baptists, from the Reformation to the Beginning of the Reign of King George I (1738-40) by Thomas Crosby; The Fourth Part of a Brief Register, Kalender and Survey of the Several Kinds, Forms of Parliamentary Writs  (1664) by William Prynne (1600-69); The History of Baptism (1790) by Robert Robinson (1735-1790); The History of New-England Containing an Impartial Account of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Country to the Year of our Lord, 1700 (1720) by Daniel Neal (1678-1743). See Baptist Magazine 1 (1809), 341; Olney Church Book, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford, ff. 42, 71.