Royal. In 1707 he was appointed joint-organist with Blow; and upon the death of the latter in 1708 he became solo organist, and also master of the children and composer of the Chapel Royal, besides being made organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1712 he wrote a brief introduction on the history of English church music to a collection of the words of anthems which he had edited under the title of Divine Harmony. In 1713 he obtained his degree of doctor of music in the university of Oxford. In 1724 he published an edition of his choral music in 2 vols. folio, under the name of Musica Sacra, or Select Anthems in score, for two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight voices, to which is added the Burial Service, as it is occasionally performed in Westminster Abbey. This handsome work included a portrait of the composer and was the first of the kind executed on pewter plates and in score. John Page, in his Harmonia Sacra, published in 1800 in 3 vols. folio, gives seven of Croft’s anthems. Of instrumental music, Croft published six sets of airs for two violins and a bass, six sonatas for two flutes, six solos for a flute and bass. He died at Bath on the 14th of August 1727, and was buried in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey, where a monument was erected to his memory by his friend and admirer Humphrey Wyrley Birch. Burney in his History of Music devotes several pages of his third volume (pp. 603-612) to Dr Croft’s life, and criticisms of some of his anthems. During the earlier period of his life Croft wrote much for the theatre, including overtures and incidental music for Courtship à la mode (1700), The Funeral (1702) and The Lying Lover (1703).
CROFTER, a term used, more particularly in the Highlands
and islands of Scotland, to designate a tenant who rents and
cultivates a small holding of land or “croft.” This Old English
word, meaning originally an enclosed field, seems to correspond
to the Dutch kroft, a field on high ground or downs. The ultimate
origin is unknown. By the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886,
a crofter is defined as the tenant of a holding who resides on
his holding, the annual rent of which does not exceed £30 in money,
and which is situated in a crofting parish. The wholesale clearances
of tenants from their crofts during the 19th century,
in violation of, as the tenants claimed, an implied security of
tenure, has led in the past to much agitation on the part of the
crofters to secure consideration of their grievances. They have
been the subject of royal commissions and of considerable legislation,
but the effect of the Crofters Act of 1886, with subsequent
amending acts, has been to improve their condition markedly,
and much of the agitation has now died out. A history of the
legislation dealing with the crofters is given in the article
Scotland.
CROKER, JOHN WILSON (1780–1857), British statesman and author, was born at Galway on the 20th of December 1780,
being the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs
and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College,
Dublin, where he graduated in 1800. Immediately afterwards
he was entered at Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1802 he was called to the
Irish bar. His interest in the French Revolution led him to
collect a large number of valuable documents on the subject,
which are now in the British Museum. In 1804 he published
anonymously Familiar Epistles to J. F. Jones, Esquire, on the
State of the Irish Stage, a series of caustic criticisms in verse on
the management of the Dublin theatres. The book ran through
five editions in one year. Equally successful was the Intercepted
Letter from Canton (1805), also anonymous, a satire on Dublin
society. In 1807 he published a pamphlet on The State of
Ireland, Past and Present, in which he advocated Catholic
emancipation.
In the following year he entered parliament as member for Downpatrick, obtaining the seat on petition, though he had been unsuccessful at the poll. The acumen displayed in his Irish pamphlet led Spencer Perceval to recommend him in 1808 to Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had just been appointed to the command of the British forces in the Peninsula, as his deputy in the office of chief secretary for Ireland. This connexion led to a friendship which remained unbroken till Wellington’s death. The notorious case of the duke of York in connexion with his abuse of military patronage furnished him with an opportunity for distinguishing himself. The speech which he delivered on the 14th of March 1809, in answer to the charges of Colonel Wardle, was regarded as the most able and ingenious defence of the duke that was made in the debate; and Croker was appointed to the office of secretary to the Admiralty, which he held without interruption under various administrations for more than twenty years. He proved an excellent public servant, and made many improvements which have been of permanent value in the organization of his office. Among the first acts of his official career was the exposure of a fellow-official who had misappropriated the public funds to the extent of £200,000.
In 1827 he became the representative of the university of Dublin, having previously sat successively for the boroughs of Athlone, Yarmouth (Isle of Wight), Bodmin and Aldeburgh. He was a determined opponent of the Reform Bill, and vowed that he would never sit in a reformed parliament; his parliamentary career accordingly terminated in 1832. Two years earlier he had retired from his post at the admiralty on a pension of £1500 a year. Many of his political speeches were published in pamphlet form, and they show him to have been a vigorous and effective, though somewhat unscrupulous and often virulently personal, party debater. Croker had been an ardent supporter of Peel, but finally broke with him when he began to advocate the repeal of the Corn Laws. He is said to have been the first to use (Jan. 1830) the term “conservatives.” He was for many years one of the leading contributors on literary and historical subjects to the Quarterly Review, with which he had been associated from its foundation. The rancorous spirit in which many of his articles were written did much to embitter party feeling. It also reacted unfavourably on Croker’s reputation as a worker in the department of pure literature by bringing political animosities into literary criticism. He had no sympathy with the younger school of poets who were in revolt against the artificial methods of the 18th century, and he was responsible for the famous Quarterly article on Keats. It is, nevertheless, unjust to judge Croker by the criticisms which Macaulay brought against his magnum opus, his edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1831). With all its defects the work had merits which Macaulay was of course not concerned to point out, and Croker’s researches have been of the greatest value to subsequent editors. There is little doubt that Macaulay had personal reasons for his attack on Croker, who had more than once exposed in the House the fallacies that lay hidden under the orator’s brilliant rhetoric. Croker made no immediate reply to Macaulay’s attack, but when the first two volumes of the History appeared he took the opportunity of pointing out the inaccuracies that abounded in the work. Croker was occupied for several years on an annotated edition of Pope’s works. It was left unfinished at the time of his death, but it was afterwards completed by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin and Mr W. J. Courthope. He died at St Albans Bank, Hampton, on the 10th of August 1857.
Croker was generally supposed to be the original from which Disraeli drew the character of “Rigby” in Coningsby, because he had for many years had the sole management of the estates of the marquess of Hertford, the “Lord Monmouth” of the story; but the comparison is a great injustice to the sterling worth of Croker’s character.
The chief works of Croker not already mentioned were his Stories for Children from the History of England (1817), which provided the model for Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather; Letters on the Naval War with America; A Reply to the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther (1826); Military Events of the French Revolution of 1830 (1831); a translation of Bassompierre’s Embassy to England (1819); and several lyrical pieces of some merit, such as the Songs of Trafalgar (1806) and The Battles of Talavera (1809). He also edited the Suffolk Papers (1823), Hervey’s Memoirs of the Court of George II. (1817), the Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1821–1822), and Walpole’s Letters to Lord Hertford (1824). His memoirs, diaries and correspondence were edited by Louis J. Jennings in 1884 under the title of The Croker Papers (3 vols.).
CROKER, RICHARD (1843–), American politician, was born at Blackrock, Ireland, on the 24th of November 1843. He was taken to the United States by his parents when two years old, and was educated in the public schools of New York
