Stephen Lobb

Stephen Lobb (c. 1647 – 3 June 1699) was an English nonconformist minister and controversialist. He was prominent in the 1680s as a court representative of the Independents to James II, and in the 1690s in polemics between the Presbyterian and Independent groups of nonconformists. His church in Fetter Lane, London, is supposed to be the successor to the congregation of Thomas Goodwin; he was the successor to Thankful Owen as pastor, and preached in tandem with Thomas Goodwin the younger.

Life He was the son of Richard Lobb of Liskeard, Mill Park, Warleggan, and Tremethick, St Neot, Cornwall, who, in 1659, was briefly MP for Mitchell. In 1681 he settled in London as pastor of an independent congregation, first in Swallow Lane, and moving in 1685 to Fetter Lane. He was accused of being concerned in the Rye House Plot, and, with another minister named Casteers, was arrested in Essex and committed to prison in August 1683.

After James II had issued his declaration for liberty of conscience (4 April 1687), Lobb was one of the ministers selected by the independents to present an address of thanks to him. He became somewhat isolated because of his stance towards James; After serving as a "preacher to a congregation of dissenting protestants at his house in Hampstead", the precursor to what later became Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, in 1694 he was chosen to fill one of the vacancies, occasioned by the exclusion of Daniel Williams, among the lecturers at Pinners' Hall, Old Broad Street. He died on 3 June 1699.