CROKE, Unton II (d.1694), of the Old Palace, St Aldate’s, Oxford.

Had it not been for the outbreak of civil war and the impact of hostilities in his local area, it is probable that this younger son of a younger son would have followed other family members straight into the legal profession. As it was, the law was his final destination after distinguished service as an army officer, and his military record was the basis of his election to Parliament.

Details are lacking of Croke’s childhood and youth. Anthony Wood recounts a possibly characteristic example of his daring when a soldier in the parliamentarian garrison at Abingdon before the surrender of Oxford in June 1646. During a sortie northwards he allegedly rustled horses grazing in meadows near Magdalen College from under the noses of royalist soldiers. For this and other exploits he was, according to Wood, given a commission.23Wood, Fasti, iii. 129. Granted in May 1647 special admittance to the Inner Temple, where his father Unton Croke I* was a bencher, he thereafter combined his studies with military action.24CITR ii. 276. He also married, and had one or two daughters before his wife, Bridget, died in Oxford in February 1649; the historian of the family makes her the daughter of Sir Charles Wise, but there is no record of this man.25St Aldate’s and St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, par. regs.; Croke, Genealogical Hist. 528. Croke was created a BCL at Oxford in June that year, and in October, as Captain Croke, was appointed with his elder brother Richard Croke* and others to value the former royal palace at Woodstock.26Wood, Fasti, ii. 129. The supposed curtailment of the commissioners’ activities by poltergeists was the subject of a ballad published in January 1650.27The Woodstock Scuffle (1650, E.587.5)

Commissioned as captain of a troop of foot in the Oxfordshire militia in April 1650, the following year Croke went with Major James Berry* in the regiment of Sir Arthur Hesilrige* to Scotland.28CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505; SP28/74, f. 9; SP28/76, ff. 1–166. While there, by dint of an overnight march of 30 miles from Irvine, Ayrshire, to Dumbarton, Renfrewshire, he executed the considerable coup of capturing Alexander Montgomery, 6th earl of Eglinton, and one of his sons. Reports arrived in London that he had netted up to £1,000 in booty and 30 or 40 horse; it was also thought that, had the earl ‘not been thus snapped up of a sudden, he would have been able to have raised 5,000 men’ for Charles Stuart.29Mercurius Politicus no. 45 (10-17 Apr. 1651), 721, 723, 727 (E626.28). In May the council of state ordered the Oxfordshire militia commissioners to raise 20 horse to replenish Croke’s troop, and, although with less conspicuous success, he was still active along the Clyde estuary in July.30CSP Dom. 1651, p. 224; J.D. Grainger, Cromwell against the Scots (East Linton, 1997), 101.

If Croke remained in the north with the rest of the regiment until the autumn of 1653, he can have had little time for his studies. Even if he came south earlier, it is likely that his progress in the law owed much to powerful patrons encouraged by his prowess in the field. By 17 September he had volunteered to accompany his kinsman Bulstrode Whitelocke* on his embassy to Sweden.31Add. 53727, f. 119. The party set sail on 6 November, yet Croke was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on the 24th.32B. Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Embassy (1772), ii. 463; Whitelocke, Diary, 396; CITR ii. 308. Although not evidently of Whitelocke’s innermost circle of advisors on the trip, Croke dined at his cousin’s table and took the opportunity to display his gallantry to an illegitimate daughter of the late king; his Valentine’s gesture of February 1654 earned him a present from the lady of a ruby and diamond ring worth £80.33Whitelocke, Journal of the Swedish Embassy, i. 454; Whitelocke, Diary, 296, 365.

Following the embassy’s return to England in June 1654, Croke rejoined his regiment and went with his troop to the west country. There he was an apparently loyal servant of the protectorate in difficult circumstances. On 20 January 1655 his ‘loving friend’ Oliver Cromwell* wrote to him at Exeter in response to several letters, including one from Croke, informing the protector that the former Leveller agitator, adjutant-general William Allen, had ‘multipl[ied] dissatisfactions in the minds of men with the present government’.34Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell ed. T. Carlyle (1868), ii. 135. Ordered to investigate, Croke and the sheriff of Devon, John Copleston*, reported together on 7 February intelligence of Allen’s meetings with Anabaptists and with royalists like Hugh Courtney; they had ‘not picked out the venom of his discourses but fairly represented the same’.35Bodl. Rawl. A.23, ff. 43-4 In the meantime, acting on instructions, Croke had arrested Allen and sent his prisoner on to London. In a separate letter of 7 February he revealed his anxiety that, once in the capital, Allen would complain of his treatment; he denied ‘that the least violence was used or any ill word [given] or any thing that looked like an affront’, and reiterated Allen’s disaffection ‘which he spares not to tell everywhere’.36Bodl. Rawl. A.23, ff. 59-62. Croke’s hope to be ‘instrumental to discover and suppress’ such subversion was for the time being unfulfilled: although he scoured Devon and Dorset, and was able to secure potential troublemakers like Edward Seymour, on the 21st he sought further orders, having failed to find Allen’s fellow agitator, Edward Sexby.37Bodl. Rawl. A.23, f. 203; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 91; TSP iii. 165. While he continued his search, an absent member of his own troop was detained by the government on suspicion of opposition. In a letter of 5 March to Cromwell from Weymouth, Croke sought to distance himself from the offender, relaying the opinion of others that the latter was ‘of a dangerous temper, and neither so well inclined to the good old way of God, nor to the government of your highness’.38Bodl. Rawl. A.24*, ff. 87-91; TSP iii. 193-4.

The rebellion led by John Penruddock finally gave Croke the opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty in a stunning exploit. As he told Cromwell the next day in a letter printed by official order, despite hearing that the insurgents numbered 200, ‘resolved to hazard all that was dear to me’ and, taking only his troop, on 14 March caught up with them at South Molton, Devon. There, ‘by the good providence of God, directing and assisting’, he routed the rebels and took about 50 prisoners, including Penruddock, Hugh Grove and Francis Jones, but not their other leader, Joseph Wagstaff. Some ‘yielded to mercy: I promised them I would use my endeavours to intercede for their lives’.39Mercurius Politicus no. 249 (15-22 Mar. 1655), 5203-4 (E.830.23); Clarke Pprs. iii. 28. Writing to Secretary of state John Thurloe* from Exeter on (?)20 March, Croke specified that these last were five men, ‘the more inconsiderable of the company, not one of them being of estate or quality as I can learn’, and pressed for ‘pity’, ‘though not for their own sakes, yet in regard of my reputation, because I lie under a promise to them’.40Bodl. Rawl. A.36, f. 23. Naming two brothers called Collier and one Wake, he reiterated the plea on 12 April from Salisbury, where he had repaired to bear witness at the trial of those rebels particularly concerned in the abduction of the sheriff of Wiltshire, John Dove*.41Bodl. Rawl. A.25, f. 315; Clarke Pprs. iii. 34; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 120. Given the painstakingly justificatory tone of Croke’s earlier correspondence with Cromwell, it seems unlikely that this mere captain would have ventured his reputation by rashly assuring clemency to the ringleaders of insurrection; nor is it entirely probable that they would have believed it to be in his gift. Yet while early reports received by royalists abroad were confused, by 1660 and perhaps as early as April 1655 treachery was being claimed.42Nicholas Pprs. ii. 242, 248. It was alleged at the Restoration that Penruddock at his trial, and both he and Grove on the scaffold, had accused Croke of reneging on articles guaranteeing them life, liberty and estates.43Englands black tribunall set forth in the triall of K. Charles I (1660), 116-8, 124; The oglin of traytors including the illegal tryall of his late Majesty (1660), 142, 149-50, 163, 176; W. Winstanley, The loyall martyrology (1665), 37. Accounts of the grand jury at Exeter which reached Westminster on 24 April merely stated that the Colliers, Wake and one other had claimed articles, which Croke ‘affirm[ed] were no articles, but verbal conditions … that they should have fair quarter, which they have had, and that he would earnestly intercede with my lord protector for their lives, liberties and estates, which likewise he hath done’.44Clarke Pprs. iii. 36. There was clearly some difference of interpretation in this case at the time, and it is conceivable that subsequently this was magnified, or even conflated with suspicions of bad faith by Dove.45W.W. Ravenhill, ‘Records of the rising in the West’, Wilts. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Mag. xiii. 182-4, 265; cf. Ludlowe, Mems. i. 405.

By early June, when it was reported that Cromwell had knighted Copleston and awarded £200 a year to Croke, the latter was chasing suspected persons further east.46Clarke Pprs. iii. 42. He wrote to the protector from Oxford on the 5th announcing the seizure, according to instructions, of several royalists and the securing of others including Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, ‘who are dangerous and disaffected persons’; the intention was to send them to confinement in Worcester.47Bodl. Rawl. A.27, f. 101. In July he was in Exeter, where he married at the cathedral Grace or Gracious, eldest granddaughter of the very wealthy Exeter merchant – and royalist delinquent – Roger Mallack (d. 1652).48Exeter cathedral reg.; Vyvyan, Vis. of Devon, 526, 547. By mid-November Croke seems to have been serving under Berry in the Marches, where he evidently proved a reliable subordinate.49TSP iv. 211. On 1 December the major-general respectfully requested Cromwell to ‘make good [his] word to Captain Croke’ while the protector, beleaguered by plots, still lived.50TSP iv. 274. In January and April 1656 Croke was at Hereford, ready to receive and relay orders from Thurloe to Berry, although he may have returned to Oxfordshire in the summer, when he was added to the commission of the peace.51TSP iv. 394, 742; C231/6, p. 340.

The following year Croke probably went with the regiment to Scotland: a letter to General George Monck* from Aberdeen on 29 April 1657 noted that his troop was ‘very free’ of Quakers.52TSP vi. 241. But by the summer he was back in Oxfordshire, where in June he was named as an assessment commissioner with his father and brother Richard.53A. and O. His unanimous election as a freeman and bailiff of Oxford on 14 August looks to be the result of an orchestrated attempt to strengthen the city’s regime of protectorate loyalists of which Richard was a key member.54Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 222. Unton took his oath on 1 October.55Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 224. In May 1658 he was on hand to suppress a planned Anabaptist or sectarian assault on the university and in June he had the royalist compounder Sir William Walter in custody.56Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt ii. 683-4; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 69. Soon afterwards he was promoted to major. He and his troopers were present when Richard Cromwell* was proclaimed protector on 6 September.57Wood, Life and Times, i. 259. Conspicuous success (as measured in Whitehall) and a lack of reliable gentry appear to explain his selection that autumn as sheriff of Oxfordshire, despite the greater local experience and seniority of men like his father and brother.58L. and I. 110. Notwithstanding his office, by mid-December he had been nominated alongside Richard for the second parliamentary seat for Oxford, impeding the aspirations of James Whitelocke*.59Whitelocke, Diary, 502. He was convincingly returned on 14 January 1659, defeating John Nixon*, who represented a more conservative interest.60Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 237.

It is probable that there was some delay before Croke set foot in the Commons, and likely that his contribution to proceedings was limited, not least because of his duties as sheriff. On 1 February he was summoned to the committee for elections and privileges to explain the double returns he had made for the county seats, or ‘if, by reason of his sickness’ he was unable to attend, to send his deputy.61CJ vii. 596b. In April he was named to three committees. Two were related directly to his military experience – consideration of the petition of maimed soldiers, widows and orphans for pensions (7 Apr.) and drawing up the impeachment articles against Major-general William Boteler* – while the other concerned the disposal of important documents at Worcester House in the Strand before its return to Margaret Somerset, countess of Worcester, from whose husband it had been confiscated.62CJ vii. 627b, 637a, 639a. However, in unsettled times his skills were probably acknowledged to be better employed keeping order in the provinces. Named a major of the second company of Berry’s regiment on 28 May, he attended the House on 10 June, perhaps for the last time, to receive his commission.63CJ vii. 669a, 679a.

By 1659 Croke normally resided at the Old Palace in Grandpont, St Aldate’s, Oxford, a property belonging to his father which he later inherited.64Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne ed. Salter, x. 224; VCH Oxon. iv. 97. A son from his second marriage was baptized and buried there in March that year.65St Aldate, Oxford par. reg.; Vyvyan, Vis. of Devon, 526, 547; PROB11/420/44. He was seen by some at least as a sectarian, provocative figure. An assize sermon preached by Robert South at the university church of St Mary on 24 July, and plausibly attended by Croke, attacked local religious hypocrites who undermined academic learning.66CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 23. The text published after the Restoration supplied no names, but Anthony Wood claimed more than once that South had reflected on Major/Colonel ‘Croke and his faction, who in a certain house in Grandpoole, kept a fast after dinner’, adding to his copy of the sermon a marginal note that Croke had ‘openly and frequently affirmed the uselessness of the universities and that three colleges were sufficient to answer the occasions of the nation’.67R. South, Interest deposed and truth restored (1660); Wood, Life and Times, i. 368. Elsewhere, on the other hand, he relayed Croke’s involvement as ‘the most active person’ only ‘as the report now was current’, adding, ‘but how true I know not’.68Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 695.

Whatever his precise views, Croke remained in good standing at Westminster. On 27 July 1659 the Commons ordered Whitelocke and Christopher Martyn* to bring in a bill to settle on him the farms in Wiltshire granted to him in 1655 from the estate of rebel Thomas Mompesson, specifying that they should be free of sequestration.69CJ vii. 770a. It proved difficult to convince local officials of this, however. In the course of correspondence on the matter that autumn Croke complained of all-round incompetence but partly excused it by the distractions of the times. Following Colonel Berry’s revolt against Parliament the loyal Croke was placed on the Wiltshire militia commission, and once his appointment was accepted in the county, he probably dominated it.70CCC 747, 753, 755, 759-60, 762, 776. He and his company were quartered at Salisbury when on 15 December they declared for the return of the Long Parliament.71Clarke Pprs. iv. 210. According to Edmund Ludlowe II*, he had ‘told divers of my friends in that county that the principal reasons of his dissatisfaction with the proceedings of the army had been taken from what I had said in the late council of officers’, although Croke seems to have been equally capable of thinking through his own course.72Ludlow, Mems. ii. 169-70. Within a few days he and his men had gathered with others at Warminster, where they published their commitment to liberty of conscience, gospel ministry, universities and a free regulated commonwealth, and their abhorrence of the interruption of Parliament.73Mercurius Politicus no. 601 (29 Dec. 1659-5 Jan. 1660), 996-7 (E.773.39). After marching to join Sir Arthur Hesilrige at Portsmouth, as Speaker William Lenthall* informed another local commander on 22 December, ‘Colonel’ Croke was ‘sent to the Isle of Wight, where his forces are increased to 700’.74Clarke Pprs. iv. 216; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 169-70.

Croke’s promotion was reported by Hesilrige in the Commons on 7 January 1660, and he appeared personally to collect his commission four days later.75CJ vii. 805b, 807b, 808a; Whitelocke, Diary, 561. Despatched to secure arms and potential troublemakers in the west country, by February he was in Exeter. Having praised him for his great care and zeal, on the 16th the council of state was ready to endorse before Parliament his request to be discharged as sheriff of Oxfordshire; by this time it must have been obvious that the two roles were incompatible.76CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 307, 309, 348, 363, 366, 368; CCC 776. On 29 February and again on 16 April he and his regiment affirmed their obedience to General George Monck*, the council and Parliament, while on 1 June Croke presented the general with an address to the king, professing joy at his restoration.77Whitelocke, Diary, 573, 580, 592.

But Croke’s part in the suppression of the Penruddock rising made him a marked man, if not universally, as Wood claimed, ‘shunned and hated by gentlemen and royalists where he abode’.78Wood, Fasti, iii. 129. Petitions from Arundell Penruddock and Jane Grove accused him of perfidiously denying articles proffered to their late husbands, while others demanded that he be excluded from the act of pardon and oblivion.79HMC 7th Rep. 97a, 110b, 112b. On 3 July his regiment was taken over by the king himself.80Whitelocke, Diary, 609. He appears to have returned to Oxford, his residence in a bond of £4,000 for his good behaviour given by Croke and his father on 29 December.81CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 426. Wood’s statement that he ‘was seized on’ on the 31st and ‘committed to the Gate-House as being suspected to be in a plot’ may be misdated, with any arrest pre-dating the bond.82Wood, Fasti, iii. 129. However, it does seem that, although not formally deprived of his place on the Oxford council until 24 March 1663, he had been prompted in the meantime to seek his fortune elsewhere.83Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 306. At some point he had acquired a lease in co. Wexford, and an additional pull to Ireland may have been the fact that his father’s brother Dr Charles Croke, formerly rector of Amersham, had settled there with his family in the 1650s.84Bodl. Carte 161, f. 158; ‘Charles Croke’, Oxford DNB. On 11 April 1663 Richard Butler, 1st earl of Arran, informed his father James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, of efforts to root out from the province of Munster officeholders with suspect backgrounds. Among them was ‘the recorder of this very city’ (probably Cork), ‘Umpton Crooke, the man I suppose you have heard of as he that took Penruddock and the rest’.85Bodl. Carte 32, f. 355. It is unlikely that Croke survived long in post.

Wood is probably correct that Croke later lived variously at Exeter, Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, Headington Wick near Oxford, and at the house in St Aldate’s inherited from his father in 1671, while his last years were spent at least partly at the Inner Temple, where his wife was buried in June 1691 and his son Richard in February 1693.86Wood, Fasti, iii. 129; VCH Oxon. iv. 97; Reg. of Burials at the Temple Church, 27. In this period his wife or his daughter Grace was in contact with her kinswoman Rachel Pengelly, with whom Richard Cromwell was lodging.87R.W. Ramsey, Richard Cromwell, Protector of England (1935), 146. It was from the Temple that on 7 February 1694 Croke made his will, requesting a private burial without show or ostentation and mentioning his five daughters. The fact that the first-named witness was Slingisby Bethel*, the republican political economist, gives some indication that, unlike his elder brother Richard, Unton had adhered to his earlier political commitment.88PROB11/420/44. If any credence may be given to the highly-coloured autobiography published anonymously in 1667 by his younger brother and sometime lieutenant, Charles Croke, it had been accompanied by notable family loyalty but also an austere and suffocating moral code.89Fortune’s Uncertainty or Youth’s Inconstancy (1667), annotated copy, Bodl. Wood 155 (3); Bodl. Rawl. A.24*, f. 91; CJ vii. 807b. Unton was buried in the Temple church on 2 March 1694.90Reg. of Burials at the Temple Church, 28. His brother Richard’s service in the Cavalier Parliament was the last by any in their immediate family.