Samuel Brooke was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1596; he proceeded M.A.
[1][2] He was imprisoned for a short period, by the action of Sir George More, for secretly celebrating the marriage of John Donne with More's daughter.
He was elected master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 5 September 1629, and on 17 November resigned his Gresham professorship.
[3] A central character in Melanthe is Nicander, the loutish heir of a rich father, who is laughed at and kicked around by the heroine Ermilla, before she finally decides to accept him as her husband.
Laud encouraged him to complete this book, but afterwards declined to sanction its publication on account of a general prohibition on debating the subject.
Beside the treatise already mentioned (a manuscript of the first three books of which is in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge), he wrote a tract on the Thirty-nine Articles, and a discourse, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke, entitled De Auxilio Divinæ Gratiæ Exercitatio theologica, nimirum: An possibile sit duos eandem habere Gratiæ Mensuram, et tamen unus convertatur et credat; alter non: e Johan.