William Brock

The welcoming, homely style of Brock also showed itself in his inclusive approach to different denominations after leaving Bloomsbury Chapel. Still in good health, but having given up his financially comfortable position as pastor of a major Central London church on reaching the age of 65, he chose to supply churches and chapels of all denominations, part-time. He became, to use his own words, "churchless, wifeless, homeless" in one week, and adapted to retirement from Bloomsbury Chapel by renting rooms in Hampstead (close to where his eldest son lived) for the summers, whilst, during winters, he "hibernated" as he called it, on the south coast, at St. Leonards, where the air was fresher and the climate milder.

Career as a biographer Amongst his wider interests, Brock was an active member of the Peace Society pioneered by such figures as Henry Richard. Brock was, therefore, opposed to warfare at the time of the Crimean War and Siege of Lucknow but nevertheless wrote a biography of General Sir Henry Havelock, who was a fellow baptist. Published in 1858, Brock's departure into contemporary biography ran to several editions. However, he was widely criticised by those who would not buy his book, including friends in the Baptist ministry and Peace Society, for attempting the portrayal of a Christian who was also a soldier in complex contemporary political and military events. Less controversial was his biography of John Bunyan; it too became a best-seller, bound into many of Cassell's late Victorian editions of Bunyan's works.

Abolitionist Besides his interests in the work of the Peace Society, albeit somewhat compromised by his controversial biographical writing, Brock was also active as an abolitionist. His name occurs frequently in accounts of meetings held in England during the 1840s, 1850s and early 1860s to support the abolition of slavery in the United States, and pressing for abolition in Josiah's Conder's nonconformist newspaper. At an early stage in this work, he appears as a delegate in the painting of the world's first international Anti-slavery Convention in 1840, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Death and memorial Brock died at St. Leonard's on 13 November 1875 and was buried at Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, London.