he became judge of the king's bench, in succession to Sir John Popham, and dying, after thirteen years of judicial service, at his house in Holborn, 23 Jan. 1619-20, was buried at Chilton. Manningham, referring to his personal appearance, describes him as 'a verry blacke man' (Diary, Camd. Soc. 74). In 1601 he gave twenty-seven books to Sir Thomas Bodley's library at Oxford, and Bodley consulted him on the endowment of the library in 1609. He published in 1602 a volume of select cases, collected by Robert Keilway, which was reprinted in 1633 and 1685.
Croke married Catherine, daughter of Sir Michael Blount of Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, lieutenant of the Tower, by whom he had five sons. Sir John, the heir, was knighted 9 July 1603, was M.P. for Shaftesbury 1628, and died 10 April 1640 at Chilton. His heir, also Sir John, lived a dissipated life. In 1667 he conspired to charge Robert Hawkins, incumbent of Chilton, with robbery. Hawkins had made himself obnoxious by pressing for payment of his salary. Having failed to bribe Lord-chief-justice Hale, who tried the case (9 March 1668-9), and soon saw through the conspiracy, Croke was ruined, sold the Chilton estates, and died in great poverty. An account of Hawkins's trial was published in 1685, and is reprinted in the State Trials.'
The judge's third son, Charles Croke, D.D. (d. 1657), was admitted student of Christ Church, Oxford, 5 Jan. 1603-4; proceeded B.A. (1608), M.A.(1611), B.D. and D.D. (1625); was tutor of his college; held the professorship of rhetoric at Gresham College, London, from 1613 to 1619; was junior proctor (1613), and fellow of Eton College (1617-1621); became rector of Waterstock, Oxfordshire, on the presentation of his uncle, Sir George Croke [q. v.], on 24 June 1616, and rector of Agmondisham, Buckinghamshire, in 1621; fled to Ireland during the civil war, and died at Carlow 10 April 1657. He took private pupils at Agmondisham, and among them were Sir William Drake, Sir Robert Croke, John Gregory, and Henry Curwen. Curwen died while in Croke's charge, and Croke published a memorial sermon (Ward, Gresham Professors; Croke, Hist. of Croke Family, i. 506-10).
Sir Unton Croke, the judge's fourth son, born about 1594, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1616; became a bencher 14 June 1635; was M.P. for Wallingford in 1626, and again in the Short parliament of 1640; actively aided the parliamentarians; was created B.C.L. at Oxford in 1649; went with Whitelocke to Sweden in 1654; was promoted sergeant by Cromwell 21 Dec. 1654; was recommended by John Owen, dean of Christ Church, for a judgeship in 1655; was made commissioner for trials of persons charged with treason in 1656, and justice of the peace for Marston, Oxfordshire, where he lived in a house inherited by his wife Anne, daughter of Richard Hore. He was for a time deputy of the Earl of Pembroke in the stewardship of the university of Oxford. After the Restoration he retired from public life: The 'Thurloe Papers' (iii.) contain much of Sir Unton's correspondence with Cromwell respecting the suppression of the cavalier plot of 1655.
[Foss's Judges; Manning's Lives of the Speakers, 273-8; Croke's Hist. of Croke Family, i. 469 et seq.; Cal. State Papers, 1590-1620; Sir James Whitelocke's Liber Famelicus (Camd. Soc.), i.; D'Ewes's Parliaments of Elizabeth; Townshend's Reports of Parliament.]
CROKE or CROCUS, RICHARD (1489?–1558), Greek scholar and diplomatist, is claimed by Sir Alexander Croke to have been a member of the Oxfordshire family of Blount, alias Croke, the son of Richard Blount, alias Croke, of Easington, Buckinghamshire, by his wife Alice, and thus brother of John Croke (d. 1554) [q. v.] But this identification is rendered very doubtful by the facts that Croke is invariably described in the matriculation registers of the universities at which he studied as ‘Londinensis,’ and that the only relative mentioned by him in his will or elsewhere is a brother, Robert Croke of Water Orton, Warwickshire, who is not known in the genealogy of the Oxfordshire family. There can be no doubt that he was a native of London, and his parentage must be left uncertain. In 1555 he described himself as sixty-six years old; hence he was born in 1489. He was educated at Eton, and was admitted a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, 4 April 1506. After proceeding B.A. in 1509–10 he went to Oxford, to study Greek under Grocyn, and thence to Paris, about 1513, to attend the lectures of Hieronymus Aleander. Gulielmus Budæus made Croke's acquaintance at Paris, and addressed to him a letter in Greek (Budæi Epistolæ, Basil, 1521, p. 168). Croke suffered much from poverty, and Erasmus, who was impressed by Croke's scholarship, asked Colet to aid him from any fund at his disposal for the support of poor scholars. Colet declined assistance, and repudiated the suggestion that he had command of such a fund with needless warmth. Croke declared that his relatives had deprived him of his patrimony, and Archbishop Warham was understood to contribute towards the
