CROKE, Robert (1611-81), of Chequers, Ellesborough, Bucks. and Hampton Poyle, Oxon.

This MP was a grandson of John Croke†, the Speaker of the House of Commons in the 1601 Parliament who went on to become a judge of the court of king’s bench.16HP Commons 1558-1603. The Speaker’s second son, Sir Henry†, who sat in the 1614 and 1628 Parliaments, served in the exchequer for over 40 years as clerk of the pipe, acquiring, in the process, a substantial fortune and a reputation for corruption.17Aylmer, King’s Servants, 187-8, 191, 196-200, 202; HP Commons 1604-1629. As his eldest son, Robert Croke followed the same career path. In his youth he was educated by his uncle, Charles Croke, the former professor of rhetoric at Gresham College and fellow of Eton College.18‘Charles Croke’, Oxford DNB. In 1632, at about the time he came of age, Croke was granted the reversion to his father’s exchequer office.19Coventry Docquets, 185; Sainty, Exchequer, 66. Possibly because he expected to succeed to this office, he completed his legal studies and was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1635.20I. Temple database. It is not known whether he ever practised as a barrister.

In 1637 Croke’s mother inherited Chequers from her elder sister, Mary Wolley.21VCH Bucks. ii. 336; F.M. Hawtrey, The Hist. of the Hawtrey Family (1903), i. 32-3; N. Major, Chequers (1996), 34. This estate was located only two miles to the west of Wendover and the Crokes thus acquired an electoral interest in that constituency. When two Parliaments were called three years later, the town’s inhabitants elected Croke as their MP. His only known contribution to the Short Parliament was to be named to the committee considering the bill against usury.22CJ ii. 108a.

Croke was not much more conspicuous in the Long Parliament. Early on he made one speech. When on 20 November, sitting as a committee of the whole House, the Commons received petition with grievances against the various law courts, Croke spoke to denounce the court of star chamber as ‘an arbitrary court of justice’ which was confiscating private property.23Procs. LP i. 219. The following day he was among many MPs who offered to underwrite the loan to be borrowed from Londoners.24Procs. LP i. 235. Otherwise, apart from being named to the committee on the usury bill (19 Mar. 1641) and taking the Protestation (4 May 1641), all that can be said is that he was responsible on 12 April 1642 for proposing the motion that Hugh Shawe, a servant of Hugh Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, be issued with a pass for travel to the continent.25CJ ii. 108a, 134b, 524a; PJ i. 160. Montgomery was a distant kinsman, being brother-in-law of Croke’s sister-in-law, the countess of Stirling. Perhaps because he was not causing trouble in Parliament, the king knighted Croke at Whitehall in the spring of 1641.26Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 210.

When civil war broke out in 1642 the Croke family divided. Robert and his father sided with Charles I, whereas Sir Henry’s brother Unton I*, with his sons, sided with Parliament. Sir Henry was appointed by the king to the commission of array for Buckinghamshire.27Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. Disapproving of the stance taken by Parliament, Sir Robert seems to have indicated his displeasure by removing himself from Westminster. On 15 November 1643 the Commons voted to expel him on the grounds of ‘his great neglect’ of his parliamentary duties.28CJ iii. 311a. In early 1644 he attended the session of the Commons summoned by the king to Oxford and signed the letter of 27 January sent by that assembly to Parliament’s commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.29Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. Attendance at Oxford would not have been difficult for Croke as the family owned an estate nearby at Hampton Poyle. That May the university granted him an honorary medical degree.30Al. Ox.

The Westminster Parliament still pursued Croke, however. By July 1644 he had been assessed to pay £2,000 to the Committee for Advance of Money, although by then no action had been taken against him.31CCAM 435. At some point during the course of the war he paid his share of the parliamentarian assessment contributions at Ellesborough.32SP28/148, f. 188v. The surrender of Oxford left him with no option but to co-operate further. On 4 September 1646 he applied to the Committee for Compounding for permission to compound on the terms of the Oxford Articles for having attended the Oxford Parliament. The following March his fine was set at £772 10s.33CCC 68, 94, 1471. The war had hit the family finances and in 1648 they were forced to sell their Oxfordshire estates.34Major, Chequers, 37. In 1651 he still owed £350 to the Committee for Advance of Money*.35CCAM 1388.

Croke played no public role during the 1650s. In 1653 Sir Robert and his wife joined with a number of their in-laws in petitioning the Nominated Parliament for a settlement in the dispute over the inheritance of Lady Croke’s sister the late Lady Mary Powell, estranged wife of Sir Edmund Powell. Croke and his allies accused Powell’s adopted heir, William Hinson (later William Powell†) of defrauding Lady Powell on her deathbed. Neither Parliament nor later the council of state were able to resolve the dispute.36CJ vii. 306a-b; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 129-30. Croke otherwise kept a low profile. It is likely that he disapproved in principle of the protectorate of his distant kinsman, Oliver Cromwell* (they were fourth cousins). However, principles did not prevent his father from profiting from his exchequer office and Sir Henry managed to remain on as clerk of the pipe throughout all these political upheavals.37Aylmer, State’s Servants, 98. On Sir Henry’s death on 1 January 1660, Sir Robert inherited the family estates. That Sir Henry named his lawyer friend, Charles Cheyne†, as his sole executor may have been intended as a snub to his eldest son, although Cheyne declined to serve and administration of the will was instead granted to Croke’s sister, Frances Weedon.38PROB11/297/185; V. Larminie, ‘Settlement and Sentiment’, Midland Hist. xii. 27-47.

Croke now automatically inherited the clerkship of the pipe, placing him in a very convenient position when Charles II was restored later that year. Unlike his father, Croke had not been compromised by serving under the commonwealth or the protectorate and any doubts about the legal status of his reversion were diluted by his loyalty to the crown during the 1640s. His appointment as clerk was confirmed in June 1660.39Sainty, Exchequer, 66. This set him up for the rest of his life as the holder of one of the most lucrative exchequer sinecures.40CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 159; 1663-4, p. 375; 1667-8, p. 445; 1671, p. 573; 1671-2, p. 85; 1676-7, pp. 38, 91; CTB iv. 19, 23, 48; v. 415, 546, 803, 1197, 1253; vi. 165, 433, 667; HMC Lindsey, 96. The pipe office was located within Gray’s Inn, to which, like his father before him, he was now admitted.41G. Inn Admiss. 239; PBG Inn, i. 431, 432. Deputing most of the work to others, Croke became the spokesman for exchequer traditionalism at its most reactionary. In 1661 he supported the revival of the department’s medieval accounting procedures.42CTB i. 148-9. When nine years later the reform-minded treasury commission tried to challenge them, Croke wrote the treatise which formed the exchequer’s official response.43E369/117; H. Roseveare, The Treasury 1660-1870 (1973), 49-50. Croke’s administrative antiquarianism again held its own against the reformers. An investigation of the pipe office was ordered in late 1677 after anomalies were discovered in the auditing of the sheriffs’ accounts, although Croke denied responsibility.44CTB v. 487-8. The issues raised by that investigation were similar to those which had got his father into trouble with the commission for fees 40 years before. As the receiver of recusant fines, Croke was heavily involved in the crackdown on recusants in the wake of the Popish Plot.45CTB vi. 111, 261, 416, 433, 515, 590, 592, 617, 629.

From 1661 Croke relinquished the Wendover seat to his eldest son, Robert†. In 1669 he obtained for Robert junior the reversion of his exchequer position, having persuaded the 1st earl of St Albans (Henry Jermyn*) to surrender it.46CSP Dom. 1639, p. 1; 1668-9, p. 413; CTB iv. 415, 546, 803, 1197, 1253; Sainty, Exchequer, 66. Robert’s death in 1671 rendered Croke’s investment fruitless. When he died in 1681 he left his estates to his widow and then to his three surviving daughters, Susan, Mary and Isabella.47PROB11/367/115; Bucks. RO, D 138/11/1. He was buried in the parish church at Ellesborough.48RCHME Bucks. i. 138. Lady Croke died four years later.49PROB11/380/593; PROB11/381/603. Chequers then passed to the eldest daughter, Susan, wife of Samuel Wall, but, when she died childless, it was inherited by Mary, who had in the meantime married the whig lawyer, John Thurbane†.50VCH Bucks. ii. 336; Major, Chequers, 37. The family’s connections with the exchequer were maintained when Isabella’s husband, Sir Samuel Dodd, served briefly as its chief baron under George I.51Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 189n.