itinerant ministry by John Wesley in 1784. In 1787 Wesley sent him to Scotland, where his year's pay amounted to 50s.; he reported that ‘no man is fit for Inverness circuit, unless his flesh be brass, his bones iron, and his heart harder than a stoic's.’ In 1789 Wesley empowered him to reduce to Wesleyan discipline the Glasgow methodists, who had set up a ‘session’ of ‘ordained elders’ on the presbyterian model. Crowther was president of conference in 1819, and president of the Irish conference in 1820. For two years before his death he was disabled by a paralytic affection. He died at Warrington on 8 June 1824, leaving a wife and children. He was buried in the chapel yard at Halifax. He published:
- ‘The Methodist Manual,’ Halifax, 1810, 8vo.
- ‘A Portraiture of Methodism,’ 1811, 8vo.
- A life of Thomas Coke, D.C.L. [q. v.]
Tyerman has made some use of his manuscript autobiography.
[Wesleyan-Methodist Mag. 1824, pp. 500, 648; Ministers of Conference, 1825, p. 472; Tyerman's Life and Times of John Wesley, 1871, iii. 507, 581.]
CROWTHER, JONATHAN (1794–1856), Wesleyan minister, was born at St. Austell, Cornwall, on 31 July 1794. His father, Timothy Crowther, and his uncles, Jonathan [q. v.] and Richard, were all methodist preachers of Wesley's own appointment. He was educated at Kingswood school, Gloucestershire, and began to preach when about the age of twenty. Having been principal teacher at Woodhouse Grove, near Bradford, Yorkshire, he was appointed in 1823 headmaster of Kingswood school. After this he was stationed from time to time in various Wesleyan circuits, and distinguished himself as a zealous defender of the principles and discipline of his denomination. In 1837 he was appointed general superintendent of the Wesleyan missions in India, and rendered important services to this cause in Madras presidency. Returning to England in 1843 on account of impaired health, he was again employed in the home ministry. In 1849 he received the appointment of classical tutor in the Wesleyan Theological Institution at Didsbury, Lancashire. He was a respectable scholar and successful teacher. To the acquirements necessary for his chair he added a good knowledge of Hebrew and several modern languages. He acted as examiner at Wesley College, Sheffield, as well as at New Kingswood and Woodhouse Grove schools. To the periodical literature of his denomination he was a frequent contributor. He was a man of no pretension, but of good judgment and much simplicity and sweetness of character. His health failed some time before his death, and on 31 Dec. 1855 he was seized with congestion of the brain while on a visit to the Rev. William Willan at Leeds. In this friend's house he died on 16 Jan. 1856, leaving a widow and family.
[Wesleyan Meth. Mag., 1856, pp. 191, 564, 846; also Minutes of Conf. same year.]
CROXALL, SAMUEL, D.D. (d. 1752), miscellaneous writer, was the son of the Rev. Samuel Croxall (d. 13 Feb. 1739), rector of Hanworth in Middlesex (24 Oct. 1685; see Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 630), and of Walton-on-Thames in Surrey. Samuel Croxall the younger was born at the latter place, and was educated at Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. degree in 1711, and that of M.A. six years later (Graduati Cantab. 1659–1823, 1823, p. 125). His first publication was ‘An Original Canto of Spencer’ in 1713. The preface contains a fictitious account of the preservation of the supposed unpublished piece of verse, which is a satire directed against the Earl of Oxford's administration. It was noticed in the ‘Examiner’ of 18 Dec. 1713, and the author replied with a pamphlet. He brought out ‘Another Original Canto’ the next year. Both cantos appeared under the pseudonym of Nestor Ironside, borrowed from the ‘Guardian.’ Croxall's name was attached to ‘An Ode humbly inscrib'd’ to George I on his arrival in England. Lintot paid 12l. 8s. for the ode (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. viii. 295). About this time he had taken orders, and in 1715 printed ‘Incendiaries no Christians,’ a sermon delivered 9 Oct. in St. Paul's, when he was described as ‘chaplain in ordinary to his majesty for the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court.’ ‘While he held this employment,’ says Kippis, ‘he preached a sermon on a public occasion, in which, under the character of a corrupt and wicked minister of state, he was supposed to mean Sir Robert Walpole. Sir Robert had stood in his way to some ecclesiastical dignity which he wished to obtain. It was expected that the doctor for the offence he had given would have been removed from his chaplainship, but the court overruled it, as he had always manifested himself to be a zealous friend to the Hanoverian succession’ (Biog. Brit. iv. 544). ‘The Vision, a Poem’ (1715), is also a courtly compliment to royalty in the persons of great English monarchs. A portion of this poem was considered by R. Southey as worthy of reproduction in his ‘Specimens of the later English Poets’ (1807, ii. 157–69). In the same year he addressed a poem to the Duke of Argyll on his obtaining a victory over the
