CROKE, Richard (c.1623-83), of the Inner Temple and All Saints, Oxford.

As the eldest son of a younger son with only a modest estate, and as a member of a leading legal dynasty, Croke was probably destined from an early age for a career in law; parliamentary service ran equally strongly in his blood. However, the absence of parish registers at Marston before 1653 and the disruption caused to the lives of inhabitants of the Oxford area who adhered to Parliament between 1642 and 1646 make it difficult to trace his movements before the interregum, when he rapidly came to local prominence. Almost certainly he was barely a teenager when in January 1636 he gained a special admittance to the Inner Temple, where his father Unton Croke I* was a bencher; it was nearly 11 years before he was called to the bar in November 1646. Taxation lists for St Aldate’s parish in Oxford, where Croke the elder had a house, noted in June 1643 that the son had ‘gone away to the Temple in London’ and it is possible that he kept away from the city for the whole of the royalist occupation and perhaps longer, as he established himself in his profession.33Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 138.

From 1649 Croke became deputy to the largely absent recorder of Woodstock, his kinsman Bulstrode Whitelocke*. Thereafter he was a highly visible presence in Oxfordshire and north Berkshire. His office, local knowledge and family connections probably explain his inclusion, with his younger brother Captain Unton Croke II*, on a commission entrusted with the valuation of the former royal palace adjacent to Woodstock town. According to a pamphlet acquired by George Thomason on 1 January 1650, ‘the state’s commissioners’, depicted as men of false religion, were haunted at their lodging by apparitions and poltergeists, and beat a hasty retreat.34The Woodstock Scuffle. An account of events between 16 and 31 October which appeared after the Restoration detailed the humiliation of the Crokes and their companions in the sight of many alleged witnesses.35The Just Devil of Woodstock. At the time, however, Richard Croke’s career was not held back.

He continued to officiate in Woodstock and in June 1650 joined the council of the Oxford Mercers’ Company, presumably as a legal adviser.36Oxon. RO, Misc. Liddle II/iii, 1; city archives, G.5.4, ff. 18v–27. The master that year, and the person most likely to have been responsible for his recruitment, was Oxford’s most prominent citizen, John Nixon*, who as mayor in 1646-7 had presided over the installation of Whitelocke as recorder (an office the busy councillor of state had subsequently resigned). In June 1653 Croke married at St Martin’s Carfax, the civic church, Elizabeth, daughter of Martin Wright, goldsmith, councillor and wealthy inhabitant of the adjacent All Saints’ parish. Here the couple made their home.37St Peter-in-the-East and St Martin, par. regs. On 12 December, as a city justice, Croke was given the freedom of the city and a bailiff’s place, and was formally chosen deputy recorder to Bartholomew Hall, perhaps recommended by his links to the Wrights and to Whitelocke, and by the standing of his father, then recorder of Wallingford.38Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 200-1. Meanwhile, Unton I’s office as sub steward of the university may well have assisted Richard’s acquisition of business within it.39Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, chancellor’s ct. 1654, item 10: 8, 9, 12.

New and old kinship ties may explain Croke’s unanimous election to Parliament on 16 November 1654.40Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 207. Originally the Oxford seat had gone to Whitelocke, whose son James was chosen for the county. The latter wrote warmly to his father on 12 July of the support he had received from his Croke cousins, adding that, were his father disposed to waive his own election for the city, ‘no truer friend could be commended by you for their choice than … Richard Croke, in regard of his interest there’.41B. Whitelocke, A Journal of the Swedish Embassy (1772), ii. 420. The commissioner of the great seal himself noted on 6 October the receipt of ‘respectful letters’ from Croke (tellingly mis-designated as ‘recorder of Oxford’), ‘professing all readiness to serve Whitelocke and his family’, and he doubtless took the offer the more seriously because Croke’s brothers Unton II and Charles had accompanied him to Sweden.42Whitelocke, Diary, 396; Journal of the Swedish Embassy, 463, 465. By 8 November Whitelocke had opted to sit for Buckingham and a new writ was issued.43C181/6, f. 300. Since John Nixon (in his second term as mayor) appears to have decided not to stand again, having eschewed presence at Westminster in favour of mayoral duties after his election as a recruiter in 1646, Croke’s way was clear. During the Parliament Croke was nominated to only two committees – for reviewing the offices of sheriff and undersheriff (4 Dec.) and for disposing of unallocated forfeitures and fines for the benefit of the commonwealth (31 Dec.) – but especially on the latter, smaller body he was in distinguished company including the solicitor general and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*.44CJ vii. 394b, 409b.

Despite his modest record at Westminster, from 1655, the year in which his brother Unton II added to a distinguished military record by capturing the insurgent John Penruddock, Richard Croke was regularly added to commissions in Oxfordshire and north Berkshire.45C181/6, ff. 81, 126, 131, 136, 157, 271, 318, 353; C231/6, p. 340; A. and O. By the spring of 1656 he was an active member of the Oxfordshire commission to assist Charles Fleetwood* as major-general for the region, and he and his father and Nixon signed the commissioners’ letter to the protector on 10 March, declaring their commitment to ‘that righteous cause’.46TSP iv. 595, 608. Quarter sessions and goal delivery order books surviving for Oxford from January 1657 reveal Croke as a notably assiduous attender until at least 1663.47Oxon. RO, QS/C/A2/02. In September 1655, as co-arbiter of a dispute between Lincoln College and its neighbours in All Saints’ parish, he helped bring a chancery case to an apparently successful conclusion.48Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.265, f. 24. Leading parishioners Martin Wright and his son William Wright were successively mayors in 1655-6 and 1656-7, and Croke apparently remained close to his in-laws, acting for the former as a trustee and witness in indentures of January and March 1658; he was also a legatee and trustee in the 1657 will of fellow parishioner and former mayor Henry Southam, William’s father-in-law.49Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 211, 216; Bodl. MS ch. Oxon. 3027a, 3227; PROB11/301/297.

In this context, Croke’s defeat of Major-general William Packer* in the Oxford parliamentary election of 4 August 1656 is unsurprising.50Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 213. This time he was more active at Westminster, if in a somewhat irregular pattern. Two days after the Parliament opened he was nominated with Bulstrode Whitelocke and other key figures to the committee preparing the act to annul the title of Charles Stuart to the throne, passed a week later on 26 September.51CJ vii. 425a. In a busy session he had 13 nominations in October and early November. Some were to committees where legal expertise was particularly relevant, like those discussing customary oaths, the probate of wills and (especially) the abolition of the court of wards (29 Oct., 6 Nov.).52CJ vii. 435b, 446a, 447a, 450a. Others concerned some of the many private interests considered by the House (provision for the children of William Masham*; the pardon of John Dean), while others related to the Commons’ wider programme of reforming legislation (trade; imprisonment for debt; the abolition of purveyance).53CJ vii. 442a, 445a, 446a, 447a, 449a, 449b. On 31 October Croke was one of the four lawyers delegated to bring in the bill to reverse the exchequer decree dissolving the feoffees for impropriations, which had ended attempts to buy up presentations to benefices to ensure a supply of godly ministers.54CJ vii. 448a. Appropriately, he was also, with Whitelocke, on the small committee set up on 4 November to devise a bill for supplying funds for town preachers.55CJ vii. 450a.

Between 6 November and 15 December Croke received no committee nominations, but it is likely he was still at work, pursuing a reforming rather than a conservative agenda. Following his motion of 3 December, he reported on the 5th from the committee for the establishment of county registers of births, marriages and burials.56Burton, Diary, i. 8, 24. The next day, in the debate on the prosecution of James Naylor for a blasphemous re-enactment of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, he challenged the call of James Ashe* to declare Naylor guilty and attaint him before calling him to answer to the House. According to Thomas Burton, while Croke acknowledged that ‘most of us, as private persons’ were ‘satisfied … with the faithful report’ of Naylor’s arrival in Bristol, and hoped that ‘every man … that professes the name of Christ, will bear testimony against this blasphemy’, he considered it only right that Naylor should at the outset have the opportunity to refute this damning interpretation of his action. ‘By all the rules of law and justice, you ought first to call him to the bar; haply he may deny matter of fact, haply matter of law.’57Burton, Diary, i. 43. Burton evidently perceived Croke as a potential ally in seeking greater liberty of conscience, expressing disappointment on 11 December when the latter failed to honour an undertaking to attend the committee for recusants, where Burton was pressing for a reduction in punitive measures.58Burton, Diary, i. 117. Nominated to committees considering land improvements in Essex (15 Dec.) and fen riots in Lincolnshire (22 Dec.), at the end of the month Croke and Nathaniel Fiennes I* promoted a cause nearer home – the petition of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to assert its rights of ecclesiastical patronage; he was duly named with Fiennes and Whitelocke to investigate.59Burton, Diary, i. 268; CJ vii. 468a, 472b, 477a.

Absent from the Commons Journal for the next six weeks, Croke was named on 13 February to the committee regulating building in the suburbs of London.60CJ vii. 491a. Thereafter, in a context dominated by the offer of kingship to Oliver Cromwell, his appearances were less frequent than previously, although he is listed as having voted for that kingship on 25 March.61The Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5) That month he was nominated to consider two cases of inheritance and settlement, including one involving his royalist kinsman Sir Robert Croke*, an heir of the financier Sir Peter Vanlore, and he was finally officially added to the committee for recusants.62CJ vii. 505b, 510b. On 24 April he spoke in support of the master of the Rolls’ motion that the sum proposed for public revenue should be not only accepted but remain in force for four years.63Burton, Diary, ii. 26, 30. The same day he was among those to whom negotiation was referred on the sixteenth article of the Humble Petition and Advice, which addressed the relationship of existing legal system to the proposed new monarchy.64CJ vii. 524a. On the 30th he was named to committees dealing with the sale of some forest lands and debts arising from the estate of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.65CJ vii. 528a, 528b. According to the Journal, apart from his confirmation (9 May) on the committee for building in the suburbs, these were his last tasks before the recess, but the fact that Burton thought he was added on 13 June to those preparing the bill on forests suggests he was still about Westminster.66CJ vii. 531b; Burton, Diary, ii. 244. Croke was back for the brief second session of the Parliament in January 1657, when he was unsurprisingly named to committees for bills on the registration of marriages and proceedings against non-resident heads of university colleges.67CJ vii. 381a, 381b.

The Crokes’ position in Oxford was strengthened in 1657 when Unton II, back from a second spell of service in Scotland, was admitted a freeman and joined the inner council; in autumn 1658 he also became sheriff.68Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 222, 224, 233. According to Wood, both brothers were present when Richard Cromwell* was proclaimed as lord protector, sharing the onslaught of missiles the proclamation allegedly provoked, and the recorder went to London in the delegation which presented the city’s congratulations to the new head of state.69Wood, Life and Times, i. 259; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 236. Such was the standing of the brothers that, when Oxford’s second parliamentary seat was restored for the 1658 elections, both were candidates, and the Whitelocke interest was squeezed out. On 18 December Whitelocke received letters from Richard Croke ‘about the election of [Whitelocke’s] son James for that city’ in which Croke ‘acquainted’ him ‘that he and his brother are both nominated … and also others, and civilly desires Whitelocke’s further directions, but no offer of himself or his brother to sit down’.70Whitelocke, Diary, 502. The challenger on 14 January 1659 was Nixon, but he was soundly beaten for both seats and the Crokes were returned.71Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 237. Once in the Commons Richard was much less visible than his brother. His sole nomination was to the large privileges committee, although this may have involved him in some challenging debate as his brother’s conduct in the Oxfordshire elections came under scrutiny.72CJ vii. 594b, 596b.

By this time it was not only Whitelocke who was referring to him as Recorder Croke. He appeared as such in election returns in 1659 and on 5 April 1660, when in the election to the Convention Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, manifested the return of the great local families in taking the senior seat, and Croke lost to Henry Huxley† in a close three-cornered contest for the junior seat.73Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 237, 255. ‘Recorder Croke’ was delegated on 14 May to draw up a remonstrance against the ‘murder’ of Charles I, but it was not until 12 June when, following Bartholomew Hall’s resignation, he was formally and resoundingly elected to the office; he promptly took the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.74Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 259, 262. He remained in office for the rest of his life. In 1670 the council noted its ‘great … sense of the recorder’s readiness to maintain the liberties of the city on all occasions and his great respect for the city’.75Oxford Council Acts 1666-1701, 39. Supported by his brother-in-law Willam Wright, he came top of the poll in the parliamentary election of 16 April 1661 and embarked on his final and longest period at Westminster, but he was not particularly active in the House, although he did promote a bill for the benefit of Bulstrode Whitelocke’s children.76Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 280; HP Commons 1660-1690.

In time, while Wright became a whig, and comprehensively trounced him in the 1679 election, Croke drifted to the tories, and was knighted at Oxford during the Parliament there in March 1681.77Oxford Council Acts 1665-1701, 119; HP Commons 1660-1690. Six months later he was unable ‘by reason of sickness’ from journeying to wait on the king on the city’s behalf, and he died in September 1683.78Oxford Council Acts 1665-1701, 141; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 40, 73. Anthony Wood’s jibe in 1666 that Croke was ‘covetous and crafty’ may have been unjust, but his memorial in Marston church, which implausibly celebrates his loyalty not just to one king but to two, tends to lend some credence to Wood’s assertion that he was a smooth-tongued flattering speaker who ‘always ran with the times’.79Wood, Life and Times, i. 90-1, 195. Although they followed him to the Inner Temple and into local office, neither of Croke’s two surviving sons sat in Parliament.