with him (note by Croker to Boswell's Life of Johnson). Boswell describes him as his ‘truly learned and philosophical friend.’ During Johnson's visit Crosbie resided in Advocate's Close in the High Street of Edinburgh, but he afterwards erected for himself a splendid mansion in the east of St. Andrew's Square, which subsequently became the Douglas Hotel. He became involved in the failure of the Douglas and Heron Bank at Ayr, and died in great poverty in 1785. He had such a standing at the bar that had he survived he would have been raised to the bench. In March 1785 his widow made application for aliment, when the dean and council were authorised to give interim relief, and after consideration of the case had been resumed on 2 July the lady was allowed 40l. leviable from each member.
[Boswell's Life of Johnson; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xi. 75, 145, 222, 261.]
CROSBY, ALLAN JAMES (1835–1881), archivist, educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in law and history in 1858, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 1 May 1865, having some years previously obtained a clerkship in the Record Office. He assisted the Rev. Joseph Stevenson in the preparation of the ‘Calendar of State Papers’ (Foreign Series) for the period beginning in 1558, and succeeded him as editor in 1871. He carried on the work until the autumn of 1881, when his health broke down. He died on 5 Dec. in the same year.
[Athenæum, 1881, ii. 815; Times, 2 May, p. 14; Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1558–77.]
CROSBY, BRASS (1725–1793), lord mayor of London, son of Hercules Crosby and his wife, Mary, daughter and coheiress of John Brass of Blackhalls, Hesilden, Durham, was born at Stockton-upon-Tees on 8 May 1725, and after serving some time in the office of Benjamin Hoskins, a Sunderland solicitor, he came up to London, where he practised several years as an attorney, first in the Little Minories and afterwards in Seething Lane. In 1758 he was elected a member of the common council for the Tower ward, and in 1760 became the city remembrancer. He purchased this office for the sum of 3,600l., and in the following year was allowed to sell it again. In 1764 he served the office of sheriff, and in February of the following year was elected alderman of the Bread Street ward in the place of Alderman Janssen, appointed the city chamberlain.
At the general election of 1768 Crosby was returned to parliament as one of the members for Honiton, for which he continued to sit until the dissolution in September 1774. On 29 Sept. 1770 he was elected lord mayor, when he declared that at the risk of his life he would protect the just privileges and liberties of the citizens of London. One of the first acts of his mayoralty was to refuse to back the press warrants which had been issued, declaring that ‘the city bounty was intended to prevent such violences’ (Annual Register, 1770, p. 169), and constables were ordered to attend ‘at all the avenues of the city to prevent the pressgangs from carrying off any persons they may seize within its liberties.’ Soon afterwards he became engaged in his famous struggle with the House of Commons. On 8 Feb. 1771 Colonel Onslow complained to the house of the breach of privilege committed by the printers of the ‘Gazetteer’ and the ‘Middlesex Journal’ in printing the parliamentary debates. Though ordered to attend the house, Thompson and Wheble refused to put in an appearance, and the serjeant-at-arms was instructed to take them into custody. As they managed to elude his search, a royal proclamation for their apprehension was issued on 9 March, and a reward of 50l. each offered for their capture. On their appearance before Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver respectively they were discharged. In the meantime Colonel Onslow had made similar complaints of six other newspapers, and on 16 March Miller, the printer of the ‘London Evening Post,’ was taken into custody by a messenger of the house for not obeying the order for his attendance at the bar. The messenger was committed for assault and false imprisonment, and Miller was released by the lord mayor, Wilkes, and Oliver, sitting together at the Mansion House. The lord mayor was thereupon ordered by the house to attend in his place, which he accordingly did on the 19th, when he defended the action which he had taken by arguing that no warrant or attachment might be executed within the city of London ‘but by the ministers of the same city.’ On the following day the messenger's recognisance (he had been afterwards released on bail) was, on the motion of Lord North, erased from the lord mayor's book. This unwarrantable proceeding was described by Lord Chatham in the House of Lords as the ‘act of a mob, not of a parliament’ (Parl. Hist. xvii. 221). On the 25th the lord mayor and Alderman Oliver attended the house, when the former was further heard in his defence, and then allowed to withdraw in consequence of his illness from a severe attack of gout.
