it conveyed of the divine nemesis which waits upon overmuch prosperity (Hdt. i. 29 seq.; but see Solon). After the overthrow of the Median empire (549 B.C.) Croesus found himself confronted by the rising power of Cyrus, and along with Nabonidos of Babylon took measures to resist it. A coalition was formed between the Lydian and Babylonian kings, Egypt promised troops and Sparta its fleet. But the coalition was defeated by the rapid movements of Cyrus and the treachery of Eurybatus of Ephesus, who fled to Persia with the gold that had been entrusted to him, and betrayed the plans of the confederates. Fortified with the Delphic oracles Croesus marched to the frontier of his empire, but after some initial successes fortune turned against him and he was forced to retreat to Sardis. Here he was followed by Cyrus who took the city by storm. We may gather from the recently discovered poem of Bacchylides (iii. 23-62) that he hoped to escape his conqueror by burning himself with his wealth on a funeral pyre, like Saracus, the last king of Assyria, but that he fell into the hands of Cyrus before he could effect his purpose.[1] A different version of the story is given (from Lydian sources) by Herodotus (followed by Xenophon), who makes Cyrus condemn his prisoner to be burnt alive, a mode of death hardly consistent with the Persian reverence for fire. Apollo, however, came to the rescue of his pious worshipper, and the name of Solon uttered by Croesus resulted in his deliverance. According to Ctesias, who uses Persian sources, and says nothing of the attempt to burn Croesus, he subsequently became attached to the court of Cyrus and received the governorship of Barene in Media. Fragments of columns from the temple of Artemis now in the British Museum have upon them a dedication by Croesus in Greek.
See R. Schubert, De Croeso et Solone fabula (1868); M. G. Radet, La Lydie et le monde grec au temps des Mermnades (1892–1893); A. S. Murray, Journ. Hell. Studies, x. pp. 1-10 (1889); for the supposition that Croesus did actually perish on his own pyre see G. B. Grundy, Great Persian War, p. 28; Grote, Hist. of Greece (ed. 1907), p. 104. Cf. Cyrus; Lydia.
CROFT, SIR HERBERT, Bart. (1751–1816), English author,
was born at Dunster Park, Berkshire, on the 1st of November
1751, son of Herbert Croft (see below) of Stifford, Essex. He
matriculated at University College, Oxford, in March 1771,
and was subsequently entered at Lincoln’s Inn. He was called
to the bar, but in 1782 returned to Oxford with a view to preparing
for holy orders. In 1786 he received the vicarage of Prittlewell,
Essex, but he remained at Oxford for some years
accumulating materials for a proposed English dictionary.
He was twice married, and on the day after his second wedding
day he was imprisoned at Exeter for debt. He then retired to
Hamburg, and two years later his library was sold. He had
succeeded in 1797 to the title, but not to the estates, of a distant
cousin, Sir John Croft, the fourth baronet. He returned to
England in 1800, but went abroad once more in 1802. He lived
near Amiens at a house owned by Lady Mary Hamilton, said
to have been a daughter of the earl of Leven and Melville. Later
he removed to Paris, where he died on the 26th of April 1816.
In some of his numerous literary enterprises he had the help of
Charles Nodier. Croft wrote the Life of Edward Young inserted
in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. In 1780 he published Love
and Madness, a Story too true, in a series of letters between Parties
whose names could perhaps be mentioned were they less known or
less lamented. This book, which passed through seven editions,
narrates the passion of a clergyman named James Hackman for
Martha Ray, mistress of the earl of Sandwich, who was shot by
her lover as she was leaving Covent Garden in 1779 (see the
Case and Memoirs of the late Rev. Mr James Hackman, 1779).
Love and Madness has permanent interest because Croft inserted,
among other miscellaneous matter, information about Thomas
Chatterton gained from letters which he obtained from the poet’s
sister, Mrs Newton, under false pretences, and used without
payment. Robert Southey, when about to publish an edition
of Chatterton’s works for the benefit of his family, published
(November 1799) details of Croft’s proceedings in the Monthly
Review. To this attack Croft wrote a reply addressed to John Nichols in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and afterwards printed
separately as Chatterton and Love and Madness ... (1800).
This tract evades the main accusation, and contains much abuse
of Southey. Croft, however, supplied the material for the
exhaustive account of Chatterton in A. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica (vol. iv., 1789). In 1788 he addressed a letter to
William Pitt on the subject of a new dictionary. He criticized
Samuel Johnson’s efforts, and in 1790 he claimed to have collected
11,000 words used by excellent authorities but omitted by
Johnson. Two years later he issued proposals for a revised
edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, but subscribers were lacking and
his 200 vols. of MS. remained unused. Croft was a good scholar
and linguist, and the author of some curious books in French.
The Love Letters of Mr H. and Miss R. 1775–1779 were edited from Croft’s book by Mr Gilbert Burgess (1895). See also John Nichols’s Illustrations ... (1828), v. 202–218.
CROFT, SIR JAMES (d. 1590), lord deputy of Ireland, belonged to an old family of Herefordshire, which county he represented
in parliament in 1541. He was made governor of Haddington in 1549, and became lord deputy of Ireland in 1551. There he effected little beyond gaining for himself the reputation of a
conciliatory disposition. Croft was all his life a double-dealer. He was imprisoned in the Tower for treason in the reign of Mary,
but was released and treated with consideration by Elizabeth
after her accession. He was made governor of Berwick, where
he was visited by John Knox in 1559, and where he busied
himself actively on behalf of the Scottish Protestants, though
in 1560 he was suspected, probably with good reason, of treasonable
correspondence with Mary of Guise, the Catholic regent of
Scotland; and for ten years he was out of public employment.
But in 1570 Elizabeth, who showed the greatest forbearance
and favour to Sir James Croft, made him a privy councillor
and controller of her household. He was one of the commissioners
for the trial of Mary queen of Scots, and in 1588 was
sent on a diplomatic mission to arrange peace with the duke
of Parma. Croft established private relations with Parma, for
which on his return he was sent to the Tower. He was released
before the end of 1589, and died on the 4th of September 1590.
Croft’s eldest son, Edward, was put on his trial in 1589 on the curious charge of having contrived the death of the earl of Leicester by witchcraft, in revenge for the earl’s supposed hostility to Sir James Croft. Edward Croft was father of Sir Herbert Croft (d. 1622), who became a Roman Catholic and wrote several controversial pieces in defence of that faith. His son Herbert Croft (1603–1691), bishop of Hereford, after being for some time, like his father, a member of the Roman church, returned to the church of England about 1630, and about ten years later was chaplain to Charles I., and obtained within a few years a prebend’s stall at Worcester, a canonry of Windsor, and the deanery of Hereford, all of which preferments he lost during the Civil War and Commonwealth. By Charles II. he was made bishop of Hereford in 1661. Bishop Croft was the author of many books and pamphlets, several of them against the Roman Catholics; and one of his works, entitled The Naked Truth, or the True State of the Primitive Church (London, 1675), was very celebrated in its day, and gave rise to prolonged controversy. The bishop died in 1691. His son Herbert was created a baronet in 1671, and was the ancestor of Sir Herbert Croft (q.v.), the 18th century writer.
Bibliography.—See Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, vol. i. (3 vols., London, 1885); David Lloyd, State Worthies from the Reformation to the Revolution (2 vols., London, 1766); John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1824), which contains an account of the trial of Edward Croft; S. L. Lee’s art. “Croft, Sir James,” in Dict. of National Biography, vol. xiii.; and for Bishop Croft see Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss, 1813–1820); John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (ed. by T. D. Hardy, Oxford, 1854).
CROFT (or Crofts), WILLIAM (1678–1727), English composer, was born in 1678, at Nether Ettington in Warwickshire. He received his musical education in the Chapel Royal under Dr Blow. He early obtained the place of organist of St Anne’s, Soho, and in 1700 was admitted a gentleman extraordinary of the Chapel
- ↑ This is probably a Greek legend (cf. the Attic vase of about 500 B.C. in Journ. of Hell. Stud., 1898, p. 268).
