Crane’s ancestors had held the manor of Chilton in west Suffolk since 1439.
In 1607 Crane married the daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, then attorney-general and subsequently a judge, a match which provided him with a useful link to the Court. He acquired the manor of Sudbury, one-and-a-half miles from Chilton, from the duchy of Lancaster in 1610, and was returned for the borough in 1614. Though he left no trace on the records of the Addled Parliament, he was to represent either the borough or Suffolk in every subsequent Parliament summoned in his lifetime.
In 1620 Crane succeeded in mobilizing an impressive array of forces to secure a county seat. In early November he secured the backing of the gentry of the liberty of Bury St. Edmunds, which constituted the western part of Suffolk. He subsequently circulated letters to the freeholders of the liberty informing them of this decision, and promising that he would ‘omit no opportunity’ to ‘show a requital’ to his supporters, although he made no specific promises. Soon he also began to attract support from the east of the county. On 29 Nov. Samuel Ward, the influential town preacher of Ipswich, wrote promising his backing, which was particularly important as the election was to be held at Ipswich, while Sir Robert Hitcham busily canvassed support for Crane in east Suffolk. Moreover, Hobart intervened with the sheriff, Sir William Spring*, to ensure that Crane had sufficient time before the election to complete his preparations.
Returned for the prestigious first seat, Crane was named to 11 committees and made 16 recorded speeches in the third Jacobean Parliament. In addition he was almost certainly mentioned at the hearing concerning the dispute between Robert Grice and his wife over property in Norfolk at a meeting of the recess committee on 13 April. In his account of this meeting, John Pym records that this was actually (Sir) Francis Crane, who also sat in 1621, but the records of the 1624 Parliament, when the case was again raised, consistently describe Crane as the man appointed by Chancery to investigate the dispute.
As Crane lived in the Stour valley, one of the principal centres for cloth production, it is hardly surprising that the industry, which was in the midst of a slump in 1621, was his major preoccupation in the Commons. At the first reading of the bill to liberalize the domestic wool trade (14 Feb.), Crane cited the receipts from alnage which he claimed demonstrated that the clothing manufacturing was ‘the third part decayed’ in Suffolk. He called for legislation to loosen the Merchant Adventurers’ control on cloth exports and argued that the ‘fraud of bankrupts’ was a major cause of the ‘decay of clothing’. Indeed, clothiers living near him had lost £60,000 in the previous two years as a result of merchants reneging on their debts.
Crane was not appointed to the committee to consider the bill to prohibit the export of wool, which received its second reading on 30 Apr., but he reported the measure on 26 May. The bill was recommitted to add a proviso to allow ships to carry sheepskins for cleaning guns and was reported by Crane later the same day. Further provisos were tendered to exempt Newcastle and Berwick, but Crane successfully opposed them and the bill was ordered to be engrossed.
On 28 May Crane protested against the king’s message announcing that the sitting would end in seven days time. Fearing that this would not give enough time to pass legislation, he said that their constituents would ‘with a heavy heart pay the subsidies we have given’ unless they saw ‘some fruits of our labours’. He moved for a petition to the king to extend the session until the end of the law term. However, the diarist Edward Nicholas states that ‘the House liked not this motion’.
Speaking again two days later, Crane questioned whether anything could be achieved ‘with the matter of trade’ in the time left available, stating that ‘we have sat here these 13 weeks and have had several meetings for trade, and yet we are no nearer a good success’. Protesting that ‘nothing that we desired [had been] granted’, he instanced ‘the matter of popery we were denied, for ordnance denied’ and stated that the two subsidies which had been voted were ‘like to prove a free gift indeed’, and that ‘contribution requires retribution’. He dismissed the various reasons advanced by James in favour of ending the sitting. There was little danger to their health in staying in Westminster because the weather was mild, and there were enough deputy lieutenants and justices of the peace - indeed ‘too many’ of the latter - to keep local government running while the Commons remained in session. Moreover, he felt that the House could cope perfectly well without the attendance of the privy councillors, a remark which may have been directed at the master of the Wards, Sir Lionel Cranfield, whom the king had particularly mentioned on 3 May when he had complained that the Parliament was distracting his ministers from their duties. He concluded by moving for a conference with the Lords to petition the king for more time.
In the second sitting Crane seconded William Mallory’s motion on 23 Nov. for an investigation into Sir Edwin Sandys’ absence from the Commons, arguing that although the House should not ‘question matter of state’ there was ‘a murmur abroad’ that Sandys had been imprisoned for what he had done in Parliament, and that this needed to be cleared up.
At the third reading of the wool export bill on 30 Nov., Crane again spoke against the proviso to exempt Berwick-upon-Tweed, which had been pressed on his committee, ‘but thought very inconvenient because they may then transport wool at their pleasure’. The coarseness of the Northumberland fleece was no argument because, mixed with finer wool abroad, it would ‘overthrow our clothing’. He also desired that measures might also be taken against exports from Scotland and Ireland.
In 1623 Crane strengthened his interest at Sudbury by conveying a house in Friar Street to the corporation for use as a workhouse, and he presumably had no difficulty in securing his re-election for the borough the following year.
Crane received only two committee appointments in the 1624 Parliament - for the revived bill to prevent the export of wool (6 Mar.), and for extending the Act of 1607 for the true making of woollen cloth (8 Mar.) - and he attended at least one undated meeting of the former.
Re-elected in 1625, Crane was named to the committee for privileges on 21 June and to five others, including those for the wool export and free fishing bills (both on 27 June).
In the 1626 election John Winthrop, the future governor of Massachusetts, persuaded Crane to stand with (Sir) Robert Naunton*, the master of the Court of Wards, for the county, although Crane had misgivings.
Crane’s worry about the threat to England’s maritime security seems to have made him amenable to Charles’ requests for supply and impatient with the proceedings against Buckingham. On 20 Mar. he moved for consideration of grievances to be deferred until the following Monday, and for the House meanwhile to ‘consider of the king’s revenues’. He was among those ordered on 4 May to draft a petition ‘wherein the desire of the House may be intimated to His Majesty for the rectifying and augmenting his revenue’.
Once again the poor health of Crane’s wife - he had remarried in September 1624 - obstructed his attendance in the Commons. He was absent without leave at the call of the House on 5 Apr., and though he was back in the chamber before the end of the month, he was given leave to depart on 24 May because of his wife’s poor health. His appointment to the committee for a bill concerning the privileges of Parliament on 13 June suggests that he managed to return before the dissolution.
In 1626 Crane put up a monument to himself and both his wives at the cost of £50 and the following year he acquired a baronetcy and commissioned a pedigree from a local antiquary.
In August 1630 Crane, along with Sir Lionel Tollemache, refused to sign warrants from the Suffolk deputy lieutenants for levying money to pay their county’s muster master. They alleged that similar levies had been questioned in the 1628-9 Parliament and that the king had refused to uphold them. Crane, however, argued that those deputies who had not been Members of Parliament could authorize rates on their own.
Crane was re-elected for Sudbury to both the Short and Long Parliaments. In 1642 he was appointed a royalist commissioner of array as well as a parliamentary deputy lieutenant, but, after some hesitation, he sided with Parliament. He made his will on 13 Feb. 1643 and died in London, a very wealthy man, four days later. He was buried the day after his death at Chilton. He left no male heirs, but his four surviving daughters married a peer (John Belasyse†), three baronets (Sir Ralph Hare†, Sir William Armyne† and Sir Edmund Bacon), and a knight of the Bath (Edward Walpole†). The estate was partitioned between them in 1652. His widow married Isaac Appleton†, who sat for Sudbury in 1661.