CRUTCHLEY, Jeremiah (1745-1805), of Sunninghill Park, Berks.

In a list of candidates drawn up by John Robinson for the general election of 1784 Crutchley is included under the heading: ‘Persons that will pay £2,000 or £2,500 or perhaps £3,000.’1Laprade, 128. He was provided with a seat at Horsham, placed by Lady Irwin at the disposal of Administration.2About his election see Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 15 Apr. 1784. How much Crutchley paid is not known. Naturally, he supported Pitt. Before 1790 there is no record of his having spoken in the House.

Crutchley was a close friend of Henry Thrale and, with Samuel Johnson and John Cator, an executor of his will. Mrs. Thrale, who disliked him, tells the story that he was Thrale’s son, and calls him ‘a mighty particular character ... strangely mixed up of meanness and magnificence’. ‘The sole comfort that fellow has in the world’, she wrote in 1788, ‘is doing his duty, which at last is done so disagreeably that he never gets even thanks for his pains.’3Thraliana, i. 496-7, 707. Her description is echoed by Fanny Burney:

How strange, sad and perverse! With every possible means of happiness ... to be thus unaccountably miserable. He has goodness, understanding, benevolence, riches, and independence, and with all these a something is wanting without which they are all as nothing.

She also writes of ‘his never-ending oddities’, and describes him as ‘the least fathomable ... of all the men I have seen’.4Diary and Letters of Mme d’Arblay, ii. 3, 19, 42.

Crutchley died 28 Dec. 1805.