The son of Samuel Smallbrooke (buried 23 May 1701) of Rowington,[1] Warwickshire, by his wife Elizabeth (died 5 May 1722), he was born at 19 High Street, Birmingham.

In 1709 he was appointed chaplain to Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave him (1709) the rectory of Hadleigh, Suffolk; this he held till 1712.

He was canon of Hereford Cathedral 1710; vicar of Lugwardine, Herefordshire, 1711; treasurer of Llandaff, 1712, the last to hold that office; and rector of Withington, Gloucestershire, 1716.

In a charge delivered in August 1728 he commended the treatise on the authority of Scripture by Faustus Socinus; with the result that this work was translated into English by an Anglican clergyman, Edward Coombe, and published in 1731 with a dedication to Queen Caroline of Ansbach.

Smalbrooke printed in 1706 a university sermon against the view of Henry Dodwell the elder that immortality is conferred by baptism.

The last of his descendants was his son Richard Smalbroke, D.C.L., of All Souls' College, Oxford, who died on 8 May 1805, aged 89, having been chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry for sixty-four years.