Buccleuch; some from the latter were exhibited at the winter exhibition at Burlington House in 1879. He is stated to have been commissioned to repair a small portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in black velvet and ermine, in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton, with instructions to make it as beautiful as possible, and to have faithfully executed his commission, thus creating an entirely erroneous type of the features of that ill-fated queen. Crosse possessed a valuable collection of miniatures by the Olivers, Hoskins, Cooper, &c., which were sold at his residence, the ‘Blue Anchor’ in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, on 5 Dec. 1722. He died in October 1724, being, according to Vertue, who knew him, over seventy years of age.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23068–73; information from G. Scharf, C.B., F.S.A.]
CROSSE, RICHARD (1742–1810), miniature painter, son of John and Mary Crosse, of an old Devonshire family, was born at Knowle, near Cullompton, Devonshire, 24 April 1742, deaf and dumb, an affliction from which one of his sisters also suffered. About 1778 he formed an attachment to Miss Cobley, who, however, refused him, and subsequently married Benjamin Haydon, and was mother of B. R. Haydon, the famous historical painter [q. v.] This was a great blow to Crosse, and was the cause of his living in retirement from general society. Having developed great abilities as a miniature painter, he came to London, and in 1758 obtained a premium at the Society of Arts. In 1760 he first exhibited at the Society of Artists, in 1761 at the Free Society of Artists, of which he was a member, and in 1770 at the Royal Academy, and continued to contribute miniatures to these exhibitions up to 1795. He resided during this time in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and in 1790 was appointed painter in enamel to his majesty. Shortly after this he gave up active practice, and retired to Wells, where he resided with Mr. Cobley, prebend of Wells, a brother of Mrs. Haydon. Here in 1808 he again encountered his old love. Haydon in his diary gives a touching account of the interview between his mother and Crosse, which was quite unexpected, and took place after an interval of thirty years; it was their last meeting, as Mrs. Haydon died on her journey to London from Exeter, during which she had stopped at Wells to see her brother. Crosse died at Knowle in 1810, aged 68. He ranks very high as a miniature painter, especially for delicate and natural colouring, and was held in great estimation by his contemporaries. He also tried painting in water colours, and exhibited in 1788 a portrait of Mrs. Billington in this manner. Some early portraits in oil of himself and his family are in the possession of Richard Reeder Crosse, his great-nephew, of Bolealler, Cullompton, and the Rev. R. B. Carew of Collipriest, near Tiverton, who also possess numerous miniatures by him. A miniature of himself was engraved by R. Thew, and published 1 Sept. 1792, and also a lady's portrait; another of the Marchioness of Salisbury was engraved by Benjamin Smith in 1791, and a portrait of Gregory Sharpe, master of the Temple, was engraved in mezzotint by Valentine Green in 1770.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Gent. Mag. (1810), lxxx. 397; Devonshire Association for the Promotion of Literature and Art, xv. 120; Taylor's Life of B. R. Haydon, i. 74; Catalogues of the Royal Academy, &c.; private information.]
CROSSE, ROBERT (1606–1683), puritan divine, son of William Crosse of Dunster, Somersetshire, entered Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1621, obtained a fellowship in 1627, graduated in arts, and in 1637 proceeded B.D. Siding with the presbyterians on the outbreak of the civil war, he was nominated in 1643 one of the assembly of divines, and took the covenant. In 1648, submitting to the parliamentarian visitors, he was appointed by the committee for the reformation of the university to succeed Dr. Sanderson as regius professor of divinity. He declined the post, however, and soon afterwards was instituted to the rich vicarage of Chew-Magna in his native county. At the Restoration he conformed, and as there was nobody to claim his living, he retained it till his death on 12 Dec. 1683. Wood says 'he was accounted a noted philosopher and divine, an able preacher, and well versed in the fathers and schoolmen.'
He had a controversy with Joseph Glanvill F. R. S., on the subject of the Aristotelian philosophy. A book which he wrote against Glanvill was rejected by the licensers, but Glanvill, having obtained the contents of it, sent it in a letter to Dr. Nathaniel Ingelo, who had a hundred copies of it privately printed under the title of the 'Chew Gazette.' Afterwards Crosse wrote ballads against Glanvill with the object of ridiculing him and the Royal Society. He was also the author of 'Λόγου ἀλογία, seu Exercitatio Theologica de Insipientia Rationis humanae, Gratia Christi destitutae, in Rebus Fidei ; in 1 Cor. ii. 14,' Oxford, 1656, 4to.
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 122; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.]
