Atte Crowche is first recorded as a juror at Dover in 1391, and from 1393 he was continually engaged in lawsuits in the town courts.
In June 1411 atte Crowche was one of a group of townsmen bound in £40 to abide by the award of the prince of Wales, acting as warden of the Cinque Ports, over a dispute that had arisen at Dover. In 1425-6 he served as keeper of the passage controlling shipping from Dover to Calais, and it was in the same year that he sold the town 100 timbers, for which it paid him 40s. Three years later he went to a meeting at Canterbury which discussed, under the mediation of the lieutenant warden, the best means of ending Dover’s dispute with its member-port of Faversham. In later years he suffered from the town’s increasing financial difficulties. Although he had been awarded £8 8s. for his wages for 63 days’ service in the Parliament of 1425, he had only received £5 at the time, the remainder, added to some earlier debts, being made payable by annual instalments taking the form of a remission of payment of 5s. a year which he owed the town as rent for a tenement. After he again attended Parliament, in 1429, despite being paid 70s. for 35 days’ wages, he was still owed £7 13s. altogether, and by 1435 this total had only been reduced to £4 1s.4d.