John Gooch Robberds

John Warden Robberds, the biographer of William Taylor of Norwich, was his second cousin.

[1] In September 1805 Robberds entered Manchester College, then at York to study for the Unitarian ministry.

His fellow student Joseph Hunter says that Robberds parried the tag De mortuis nil nisi bonum, as a plea for reverence to antiquity, by translating it "Of dead things nothing is left but bones".

Leaving York at midsummer 1810, he preached for a few months at the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, and was invited to settle there as colleague to Theophilus Browne; but on 19 December 1810 he was called to Cross Street Chapel, Manchester, in succession to Ralph Harrison, and as colleague to John Grundy.

His colleagues were, from 1825, John Hugh Worthington (1804–1827), the betrothed of Harriet Martineau, and from 1828 William Gaskell.