CROFTS, Anthony (c.1593-1657), of West Stow, Suff. and Gray’s Inn, London

The Crofts had held West Stow, five miles from Bury St. Edmunds, since early medieval times.J. Gage, Thingoe Hundred, 133; Copinger, i. 403-4; vii. 101. Crofts himself was elected for Bury in 1624, but left no trace on the records of the last Jacobean Parliament. In the following year he took over his father’s Bedfordshire property at Chalgrave, burdened with a mortgage of £3,000, and sold it to the Mercers’ Company.VCH Beds. iii. 346; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 15. He retained his chambers at Gray’s Inn even after his marriage, and may have spent much of his time in London, for he never held local office.C2/Jas.I/D8/58. In his will, dated 15 May 1654, he left portions of £1,200 each for his two younger sons, desiring them to take up ‘some honest calling in the world’. One was to be apprenticed to a London merchant, the other to study the Common Law, provided that ‘the profession is like to be upheld in practice and esteem’.PROB 11/267, ff. 327-9v. Crofts died on 1 Oct. 1657 in his 64th year and was buried at West Stow, where an epitaph commends his ‘tender care towards his wife and children and great abilities and forwardness to assist his friends’.Hervey, 78, 152-4. His second son William was returned for Bury as a Tory in 1685.