Educated at Cambridge, and was a man of good parts and some learning. He began to inveigh openly against the ceremonies of the church, at Norwich, in 1580; but, being much opposed by the bishops, he, with his congregation, left England, and settled at Middleburgh, in Zealand, where they obtained leave to worship God in their own way, and form a church according to their own model. They soon, however, began to differ among themselves, so that Brown, growing weary of his office, returned to England in 1589, renounced his principles of separation, and was preferred to the rectory of a church in Northamptonshire. He died in prison in 1630. The revolt of Brown was attended with the dissolution of the church at Middleburgh; but the seeds of Brownism which he had sown in England were so far from being destroyed, that Sir Walter Raleigh, in a speech in 1592, computes no less than twenty thousand of this sect.