[1][5] John Crosse was born in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in 1739, and educated in a school at Hadley in Hertfordshire.
[7] On the account of Joseph Sutcliffe (1762–1856), published by William Stamp, Crosse walked from Islington and heard Alexander Coates preach in east London, at age 19, and through Methodist connections met John Wesley.
[9] He was ordained deacon in 1763 by Robert Hay Drummond, with an Edinburgh M.A., and became a curate at Full Sutton in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
[7][13] John Thornton of Clapham had experienced an evangelical conversion around 1754, in which Madan and Henry Venn were involved.
In 1775 he was made perpetual curate of two livings, the Whitechapel Church, Cleckheaton, and Cross Stone chapel in Halifax.
[2] He began by improving the organ and singing at his parish church, which expanded his congregation by attracting parishioners from nonconformist chapels.
[20] His continuing relationship with the widowed Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, who lived at Madeley, Shropshire, brought into his orbit, in the last years of his life, Patrick Brontë, William Morgan and John Fennell, all of whom joined him in the Bradford parish.
[21] In later life Crosse was blind, but he continued to perform the offices of the church till a fortnight before his death, which took place on 17 June 1816.
[2] His successor was Henry Heap, for whom Crosse had found a curacy with Cornelius Bayley at St. James's Church, Manchester.
[18] An account of Crosse's pastoral work is given in The Parish Priest: pourtrayed in the Life, Character, and Ministry of the Rev.