at one of the Scotch universities; was pastor at Crutched Friars in 1688; was appointed to the Pinners Hall merchants' lectureship in 1694; and died at an early age in 1697—just eight years before Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe and immortalised his name.

He studied for the ministry in the Newington Green Academy, under Charles Morton, ejected from Blisland, Cornwall, who left England in 1685, and afterwards became vice-president of Harvard University.

Having in the estimation of his peers a good voice and graceful manner, in addition to a sound judgment, he soon acquired distinction as a preacher, and secured a large auditory.

Cruso held aloof from the doctrinal disputes which broke the harmony of the "happy union" between the Presbyterians and Independents in the first year of its existence (1691), and which led to the removal of Daniel Williams, D.D.

By a majority of one vote his congregation chose as his successor Thomas Shepherd, afterwards independent minister at Bocking, Essex.

An elegy to Cruso's memory was published in 1697, fol., by J. S. (perhaps John Shower, his fellow-student), who complains of the "barbarous verse" of others who had attempted the same theme.

His sermons on the rich man and Lazarus, "preached at Pinners' Hall in 1690" (sic; but the true date is 1696), were reprinted at Edinburgh in 1798, 12mo, with preface by Robert Culbertson of Leith.