Paul Best (Hutton Cranswick c.1590 - Driffield, 1657) was one of the first British converts to the "Socinian" Polish Brethren, and one of the first Unitarians to be imprisoned.
[3] In April 1617 he inherited the family manor at Elmswell, East Riding of Yorkshire, a part of which he sold to finance his travels in Europe from the 1620s to the 1630s, as an adventurer and mercenary who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Lützen (1632).
He then returned to England and fought in the Parliamentary Army during 1644 - the year King Charles I lost control of Yorkshire.
Roger Ley, "for his judgment and advice only" who informed on Best, who was then charged with antitrinitarianism and on 14 February 1644 incarcerated at the Gatehouse, Westminster making two petitions to Parliament in April 1646[6] and August 1646[7] During 1647 he may have had free contact with another prisoner at the Gatehouse, Westminster, and another early convert to Socinian belief, John Biddle.
A direct result of Best's 1646-7 publications was the Blasphemy Act of 1648, which made it a felony to doubt the Trinity or the validity of any of the standard books of the Protestant Bible.