Croft claimed descent from Bernard the Bearded (the Domesday tenant of the property from which he derived his surname, 12 miles from Hereford), who gave up everything to enter a monastery. The family regularly represented Herefordshire from 1312, and reached its apogee under Elizabeth, when Croft’s grandfather served as comptroller of the Household. Although the latter supplemented his income by selling state secrets to Spain, he left his estate so heavily encumbered that Croft’s father, after dabbling unsuccessfully in sorcery, fled the country in 1594 to escape his creditors.
Despite continuous service in the last four Elizabethan Parliaments, there were several obstacles to Croft’s candidature in 1604. A former follower of the 2nd earl of Essex, he never enjoyed an easy relationship with (Sir) Robert Cecil†. Indeed, he had offended the chief minister so seriously that he was initially refused a knighthood on the accession of James I, an unusual distinction that was only averted by a letter from the 3rd earl of Southampton begging Cecil to consider ‘what passed from him to discontent you proceeded rather from his present grief than out of any want of respect’.
In 1604 Croft made 17 recorded speeches and was appointed to 49 committees. Pressing into the overcrowded House of Lords to hear the speech from the throne that opened the session on 19 Mar., Croft was thrust back by a yeoman of the guard with the deliberately offensive words: ‘Goodman burgess, you come not here’. Having ascertained the name of the officious beefeater, Croft complained to the Speaker, and after some debate the offender appeared in custody and apologized.
Croft spoke frequently on the proposed Union with Scotland. On 23 Apr. he moved that the lawyers should consider the legal implications of the change in the name of the kingdom. The following day he proposed that the vice-chamberlain (Sir John Stanhope I*) should be sent to the king to thank him for his message allowing freedom of speech on this subject, and was one of the Members appointed to maintain ‘matters of honour and reputation’ at the conference with the Lords on 28 April.
Croft was among those appointed on 26 May to draft a message to the Lords about the bishop of Bristol’s book refuting the arguments of the Commons against the Union. On 1 June he was named to the committee to prepare a conference with the Lords about the book and the following day he was appointed to assist in presenting the Commons’ case to the Lords. On 11 June, in the debate following Bacon’s report on the conference, Croft moved that they should inform the Lords that they were not satisfied with the bishop’s oral apology and that they required a submission in writing to be brought down to the Commons. He spoke on the matter again on 21 June but his words are unrecorded.
On 27 Apr. he was appointed to the committee for the bill against lurking and secret outlawries. He successfully moved that the same committee should draft a bill against the stealing of outlawries, but no such measure ever materialized.
During his absence in London, Croft’s tenants at Luston had seized the opportunity to trespass on his enclosures.
During the second session Croft was named to 36 committees and made 13 recorded speeches. He probably attended the start of the session, as he was among those appointed to consider the incorporation of the Spanish Company on 5 Nov. 1605.
On 30 Jan. 1606 Croft was appointed to the committee for the bill for the better execution of the purveyance laws, and in the debate on purveyance on 15 Feb. he moved ‘to have an end of the matter of purveyors’, and for the articles against the purveyors to be delivered. He spoke again on the same subject on 7 Mar. when he proposed to ‘let the Lords know that we have determined touching the composition’.
On 10 Feb. 1606 a bill was introduced in the Commons to amend the statute of Union with Wales.
It may have been Croft who brought in the bill ‘for the better maintenance of husbandry and tillage in the county of Hereford’, since his name heads the committee appointed on 20 March.
During the third session Croft was named to 19 committees and made 13 speeches. Appointed to the privileges committee on 19 Nov. 1606, he took part in the debate three days later over whether the attorney-general, Sir Henry Hobart*, should be disqualified from sitting by virtue of his office. When a division was called Croft argued that the opponents of disqualification should go out into the lobby ‘for they would have the king’s attorney to remain a Member here, which was never seen’. However others disputed Croft’s reasoning and in the end the House agreed not to put the question.
In the third session most of Croft’s energy was devoted to obstructing the Union with Scotland. He was appointed to attend the conference with the Upper House of 24 Nov. 1606 and two days later he argued that Members should debate the issues raised among themselves before conferring with the Lords again.
In seeking a formal Union, James I sought to naturalize the subjects of both kingdoms and to repeal any law which reflected the former enmity between the two countries. On 20 Feb., however, Croft argued that those born since James’s accession were not legally naturalized.
In the debate on 28 Apr. Croft supported Sandys’s motion, for the Commons to proceed with the perfect Union and reproved the Speaker for describing Sandys’s proposition as new. ‘I think the project ... to be good’, he declared, ‘and I could wish that the king might clearly understand ... how much we are stalled with the imperfect Union, and how much we desire the perfect Union’. Denying that the proposal was a ‘diversion’ from James I’s own proposals, he again questioned the good faith of the Scots, asserting: ‘I doubt not but the Scottish do desire the imperfect Union, thereby to enjoy the benefits with us, which when they have [they] perhaps will be backwards in the perfect’.
Croft was the first Member appointed on 4 Mar. to the committee for the bill to permit enclosure in certain Herefordshire parishes, but the measure was reported by Anthony Pembrugge, who sat for Hereford.
Croft subsequently attributed his purge from public office to his opposition to the Council in the Marches.
We have been heretofore much benefited by your care and travail for us, in attending the right honourable the lords of His Majesty’s Council, in moving the High Court of Parliament, and in soliciting the reverend judges of the realm ... to be freed from the jurisdiction of the Council established in the principality of Wales and the Marches.
The lord president responded by accusing Croft of oppression and malversation as steward of the queen’s manor of Leominster, but provided evidence of only two cases.
Croft’s deteriorating finances led him on 15 Oct. 1607 to seek a loan from Sir John Scudamore†. His difficulties, he insisted, were due not to prodigality, but to usury. ‘I am now in this case, that I owe yet £1,500, all upon interest, enough to be my utter ruin, as I have too dearly experienced twice within these 17 years’. What Croft wanted was £1,000, to be repaid over ten years, without interest, of course. As security he offered his manor of Luston, which he guaranteed free of all encumbrances (except his unruly tenants, whom he did not mention). ‘A man of any spirit’, he admitted, ‘would rather starve than sue as I do in this letter’, but he knew that Scudamore had no better use for his money, and ‘in all things else you ... have showed yourself most affectionately kind’.
In the fourth session of the first Jacobean Parliament Croft was named to 59 committees, made 31 speeches, and acted as teller in five divisions. By now well-established as a voluble speaker, Croft’s first recorded intervention, on 14 Feb. 1610, was ‘not less than an hour’ in length. He started by enumerating what he considered the three ‘ends of parliament’, which were ‘to take[sic] good laws’, ‘to make known public grievances’ and to grant the king ‘aid from the subjects’. Asserting that ‘every man [was] to think of the grievance that most concerns his country’, he launched into an attack on the jurisdiction of the Council of the Marches over the four English counties. In particular he raised the case of a ‘poor man suffered to perish’ who had been imprisoned by lord chancellor Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton†) ‘for not obeying the Court in Wales’, and had died as a consequence. The attack on Ellesmere was ‘tenderly apprehended’ by the Commons and the following day was answered by Sir Henry Montagu, who entered into a lengthy discussion of the particular case but ran into trouble when he appeared to suggest that privy councillors could imprison at their discretion. In response Croft ‘went through his speech better than he did before’ and moved successfully that the case should be referred to the committee for grievances.
Croft was interested in other grievances besides the Council in the Marches. On 24 Apr. he delivered a long speech in the debate following Sir Edwin Sandys’ report from the committee for grievances concerning silenced ministers in which he supported Sir Francis Hastings’ motion to proceed by petition to the king rather than as a grievance.
Croft continued to take an interest in issues concerning the conduct of the House, and on 26 Feb. he called William Holt to order over his long declamation against Dr. Cowell, though ‘tender in staying any man’s speech’.
That Croft’s concern with proper procedure could descend into pedantry was shown when the Commons took the oath of allegiance on 5 June. He seems to have been concerned that the oath did not sufficiently distinguish between the pope’s temporal powers and spiritual authority. After announcing to the House ‘what manner he would take it, for that he would use no mental or secret reservation’, he raised a query concerning the provision in the oath denying that the pope could authorize foreign princes to invade the country. He took the oath, he declared, on the understanding that the clause meant that the pope had no right to authorize a sovereign prince to invade England, and did not refer to principalities which were part of the papal states, because ‘he doth not know what power the pope hath over his tributary princes that hold of him’.
On 15 Feb. Croft was named to attend the conference with the Lords at which Salisbury detailed the crisis in the Crown’s finances , and in debate four days later he suggested that two courses were open to the Commons: ‘either to send to the Lords, or to hear what we should do from the privy councillors in this House’.
Although Croft saw impositions as a grievance in themselves, describing them on 18 May as ‘the great grievance’, he seems to have been more exercised by James’ attempt to stop the Commons debating the issue. When the Speaker, on the king’s instructions, ordered the Commons to give over discussion of impositions, Croft declared, on 11 May, that ‘it hath grown into too much custom that the Speaker should bring any message from the king, but when he was sent for by the House’. On 18 May he argued that ‘the stay of dispute of impositions, [is] the stay of our business’, and he successfully moved to have an answer to the king drafted in grand committee. He accepted Sir Walter Cope’s draft assuring the king that the Commons was no less dutiful than its predecessors, remarking on the following day that ‘our intention was always so’. However, he was concerned at the implications of James’s intervention for the Commons’ right to free speech, and on 22 May called for ‘a petition of right, showing how in all parliaments we had freely disputed of any thing concerning ourselves’. This proposal was taken up by the Commons, and the petition was duly presented to the king on 24 May, although Croft was not named to the delegation sent to deliver it. James now agreed to allow the Commons to debate impositions provided that the Commons would proceed with the Great Contract.
On 13 June Croft was among those who argued that grievances and supply should go hand in hand, and two days later he urged the House ‘for dispatch’ to ‘lay aside all other business, and enter into the matter of impositions’. He seems to have sought to work with privy councillors on this issue, passing to Sir Julius Caesar* the text of a bill against impositions on 3 July.
Croft also took an interest in various minor items of legislation. On 21 Mar. he spoke in the debate on the first reading of a bill to regulate brewing in victualling houses, and acted as teller in favour of rejecting it.
During the brief autumn recess (which was intended to enable Members to consult their constituencies about the Contract), the Herefordshire grand jury urged the county bench to support the knights of the shire in their efforts to obtain redress from the king against the Council in the Marches. The lord president of the Council subsequently claimed that the jury was dominated by kinsmen or dependents of Croft, Scudamore and Coningsby. During this same period Croft was obliged to beg a favour for a cousin who had murdered a royal gamekeeper.
When Parliament reassembled in October the Speaker, after a few days of sitting, resolved to call the House. As there were less than 100 Members present, Croft obtained a postponement in ‘a discreet, stout, and well-tempered speech’.
First, because we were gone so high before as we could not reach higher; secondly, ‘twas agreed nothing should be spoken concerning the matter of supply till we had concluded the matter of support; and thirdly, to make supply part of the bargain ... were to make the Lords partners to that part which properly belongs to us and not to them.
Procs. 1610, ii. 321.
Croft was one of the 30 Members summoned to an audience with the king on 16 Nov., when he distinguished himself by interrupting Sir Henry Neville I with his familiar exposition of the grievances of the four shires.
By the end of 1610 Croft may already have transferred the management of his demesnes at Croft and Gatley to his wife, who claimed to have raised the annual proceeds from £300 to £500. Her own extravagance was notorious, and she settled the entire increase on their eldest son (Sir) William* to support him in his travels. Croft for his part obtained a grant of the Leominster manors from the queen; but this could not extend beyond her own lifetime, and the resultant litigation with the tenants rendered it a disastrous investment. A widow named Caswall brought a suit in Chancery against him for oppression and eviction, but Croft’s counsel, Richard Martin*, had the case dismissed on a technicality.
The death of Salisbury and the rise to power of Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, encouraged opposition to the Council in the Marches.
Croft’s eagerness to win the king’s favour had not passed unnoticed, and in the 1614 Parliament he was twice ‘saluted’ as an undertaker (on 8 and 12 April). He was no doubt referring to himself on 14 May, when he said ‘that divers taxed as stars of the last Parliament, [have] now [turned to] jelly’. He later wrote that he was ‘cried down for a time-server and turncoat’.
On 5 May Croft proposed that the debate on supply be opened the following day, but he found no seconder.
In the debate over the attorney-general’s right to sit in the Commons (8 Apr.) Croft reiterated his earlier opinion ‘that the attorney-general ought not to be of the House, nor any attorney-general’. However he moved that the question should be referred to a committee ‘in satisfaction to His Majesty for doing it gravely and discreetly’. He was the first Member appointed to search for precedents, and was also named to the committees for privileges and the expiring laws continuance bill.
In the debate on the Northumberland election dispute (9 Apr.) Croft argued strongly for sending for Sir George Selby*, stating that the case was ‘tending to the extreme prejudice of all elections’.
Croft took a firm line on the Stockbridge election case. On 9 May he argued that the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Sir Thomas Parry*, who was accused of interfering in the election, should be allowed into the House to hear the accusations against him but afterwards be sequestered and questioned at the bar.
Given that Croft privately considered that impositions were technically legal, it is not surprising that at the debate following the second reading of the bill against these duties on 18 Apr. he was reluctant to have the question of their legality raised again, asserting that ‘this point [was] cleared upon argument in the last Parliament’. He nevertheless supported the bill, as impositions meant that no man could be certain of the ownership of his property. There were, however, ‘some things [to be] corrected [which were] amiss in the bill’, and he wanted ‘all such things in the bill as may give any touch to His Majesty’s honour’ to be particularly considered.
Having put his faith in lobbying Somerset to secure the exemption of the four shires from the Council of the Marches, Croft made little attempt to raise the matter in Parliament in 1614. On 18 Apr. he was named to the committee to repeal a clause in the statute of Union with Wales, but this was a bill of grace intended to abolish the Crown’s unused power to legislate by decree in the principality, and did not affect the powers of the Council.
In the debate concerning Bishop Neile’s attack on the Commons on 26 May, Croft emphasized the importance of avoiding a breach between the two Houses, arguing that it was ‘better to let him go unpunished than to bring ourselves into that snare’.
The dissolution of the Addled Parliament with no concessions from the Crown ended Croft’s hopes of regaining his position within his native county. He received his paltry reward in the shape of a knighthood for his son a week after the dissolution.