CRAWLEY, Sir FRANCIS (1584–1649), judge, was born, according to Lloyd (Memoirs of those that Suffered for the Protestant Religion, 1668, p. 290), at Luton, Bedfordshire, on 6 April 1584. Lloyd adds that ‘his dexterity in logic at the university promised him an able pleader at the Inns of Court.’ There is no trace of him at the universities, however. He studied law first at Staple Inn and then at Gray's Inn, to which he was admitted 26 May 1598. He was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law on 26 June 1623, and elected reader at Gray's Inn in the following autumn. In 1626 he was among the counsel whom the Earl of Bristol petitioned to have assigned him on his impeachment. He was appointed to a puisne judgeship in the common pleas on 11 Oct. 1632, and knighted. In November 1635 he advised the king that corn fell within the purview of the statute 25 Hen. VIII, c. 2, which regulated the price of ‘victuals,’ and that a maximum price might be fixed for it under that statute, the king's object being to fix such a maximum and then raise money by selling licenses to charge a higher price. He subscribed the resolution in favour of the legality of ship-money drawn up in answer to the case laid before the judges by the king in February 1636. He subsequently gave judgment in the king's favour in the exchequer chamber in Hampden's case (27 Jan. 1637–8), and publicly asserted the incompetence of parliament to limit the royal prerogative in that matter. He was impeached for these actions in July 1641, the proceedings being opened by Waller, who compared his ‘progress through the law’ to ‘that of a diligent spy through a country into which he meant to conduct an enemy.’ He was restrained from going circuit (5 Aug.). Probably he joined the king on or before the outbreak of hostilities, for in 1643 he was at Oxford, where he received the degree of D.C.L. on 21 Jan. He died on 13 Feb. 1649, and was buried at Luton. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Rotherham, knight, of Luton, he had two sons, who survived him, of whom the elder, John, died without issue, and the younger, Francis, who appears as the holder of an estate at Luton in 1660, entered Gray's Inn on 7 Aug. 1623, was called to the bar in February 1638, appointed cursitor baron of the exchequer in 1679, and died in 1682–3.
[Philips's Grandeur of the Law (1685), p. 212; Dugdale's Orig. 296; Chron. Ser. 107, 108; Cobbett's State Trials, ii. 1300, iii. 843, 1078–87, 1305; Cal. State Papers (Dom. 1637–8), p. 540; Parl. Hist. 847; Whitelocke's Mem. 47; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), ii. 44; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Rushworth, pt. iii. vol. i. p. 329.]
CRAWSHAY, ROBERT THOMPSON (1817–1879), ironmaster, youngest son of William Crawshay [q. v.] by his second wife, Elizabeth Thompson, was born at Cyfarthfa Ironworks 8 March 1817. He was educated at Dr. Prichard's school at Llandaff, and from a very early age manifested a great interest in his father's ironworks, and spent much of his time among them. As years increased he determined to learn practically the business of an ironworker, and in turn assisted in the puddling, the battery, and the rolling mills; he carried this so far that he even exchanged his own diet for that of the workmen. On the death of his brother William by drowning at the old passage of the Severn he became acting manager of the ironworks, and at a later period when his brother Henry removed to Newnham he came into the working control of the entire establishment. In 1864 the original lease of Cyfarthfa lapsed, and was renewed at Crawshay's earnest entreaties. On the death of his father, the active head of the business, in 1867 he became the sole manager, and not only considerably improved the works, but opened out the coal mines to a greater and more profitable issue. At this time there were upwards of five thousand men, women, and children employed at Cyfarthfa, all receiving good wages, and well looked after by their master. Crawshay was often spoken of as the ‘iron king of Wales.’ His name came prominently before the public in connection with the great strikes of 1873–5. He was averse to unions among masters or men, but assented, as a necessary sequence of the action of the men, to a combination among the masters. Unionism became active at Cyfarthfa at a time of falling prices; Crawshay called his men together and warned them of the consequences of persisting in their unreasonable demands; but as they would not yield the furnaces were one by one put out. Soon after came the revolution in the iron trade, the discarding of iron for steel through the invention of the Bessemer and Siemens processes, and the thorough extinction of the old-fashioned trade of the Crawshays and the Guests. Crawshay would have reopened his works for the benefit of his people had it not been very apparent that under no circumstances could Cyfarthfa again have become a paying concern. The collieries were, however, still kept active, employing about a thousand men, and several hundreds of the old workmen laboured on the estates. For the last two years of his life he took little interest in business; he had become completely deaf and broken down by other physical infirmities. While on a visit to Cheltenham for the benefit of his health he died rather
