Thomas Jacomb (1622-87), born near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, prepared for the ministry at Magdalen Hall, Oxford and St John’s, Cambridge. At the latter he served as a Fellow of Trinity College, before moving to London in 1647 as chaplain to Elizabeth Cecil, Countess of Exeter, a service he continued through forty years.
From 1650 he was minister of St Martin’s, Ludgate, and until the Great Ejection of 1662 he was among the Puritan leaders of the city, being a member of Cromwell’s sub-committee on religious fundamentals and a commissioner at the Savoy Conference. His brother, Samuel, was vicar of St Mary Woolnoth from 1655 to his death in 1659.
When the silencing of the Puritans occurred, Jacomb continued to preach in the home of the Countess, where his sermons on Romans 8 (published by the Trust as a reprint of the 1868 Nichol edition) were first heard and where he finally died on 27 March 1687, ‘leaving an incomparable library’ of over 5000 books.
Baxter writes of Jacomb as one ‘known to be a man of gravity, sober and moderate principles,’ and at his funeral William Bates spoke of him as an eminent servant of Jesus Christ. His other publications included a number of individual sermons and A Treatise of Holy Dedication, 1668. He was one of the eight nonconformist ministers who helped to complete Annotations on the Bible, begun by Matthew Poole.