said testament, and last will ; to whom he gave all his goods, chattels, and debts whatsoever. Witnesses hereof Will. Gent, and John Knight, Gent. Sir Will. Castell, Curate of Long Buckby, aforesaid, Will. Frend, and others. The will was proved by the oath of Christopher Robynson, Proctor of the Executors. His known printed works, which are all extremely scarce, are these. Oratio de Graecarum disciplinarum laudibus. Dedicated to Nicholas, Bishop of Ely, by an epistle dated cal. Jul. 1519. In quarto". Oratio qua Cantabrigienses est hortatus ne Graecarum literarum deser- tores essent. Printed with the former. Before and at the end of these two Orations, Gilbert Duchet has a laudatory Epistle . Richardi Croci Britanni Introductiones in rudimenta Grasca. Dedi- cated to Archbishop Warham. Expensis providi viri Domini Johannis Lair de Siberch p . Tabula Greecae Linguae, published in Germany : mentioned in the dedi- cation of his Rudimenta Graeca. Elementa Gramma ticae Graecae 1 '. De Verborum Constructione. I suppose this is his translation of Theodore Gaza's fourth book De constructione, which he dedicated to the Elector of Mentz. Printed at Lypsick, 1516, in quarto r . " Wood's Ath. On. col. 86. ° Ibid. ■" Wood, and Ames's Typographical Anti- quities, page 45(5. q Wood. r Ibid. Grammatica Theodori Gaza; Latine verterunt partim Erasmus, anno 1518, par- tim vero Richardus Crocus nostras, lingua; Graecae apud Lipsienses professor omnium primus. Hodius de Graecis illustribus, p. 72. chap. ii. RICHARD CROKE, D.D. 447 He translated into Latin, Chrysostom in Vetus Testamentum, and Elysius Calentius. This writer was a Latin poet, who was born at Naples, and died before 1503. He was preceptor to Frederic, the son of Ferdinand the First, King of Naples. His works were published in folio, the first edition it is not known when, the second at Rome in \503, the third at Basil in 1 554 s . Opera Ausonii impressa per Valentinum Schumen, 4to. 1515, cum epistola praemissa dedicata Martino Lenbelio, Civi Lypsiensi, et annota- onibus 1 . * Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannica Hibernica, p. 209. Moreri. ' See ante. 448 SIR JOHN CROKE. CHAPTER III. Sir John Croke, or lc Blount, and Elizabeth Unton. TlIE family was now permanently established at Chilton, and Sir John Croke, the son of John Croke, Esquire, and Prudentia C.ive, succeeded to the ample inheritance of his father. The tranquil life of a man of fortune affords tew incidents for the pen of a biographer, and little which can interest posterity. But Sir John Croke was the patriarch from whose loins several distinct families proceeded, the descendants of his numerous children. He was bom in lo;30\ The place of his education is not known, except that at seventeen years of age he was admitted of the Inner Temple, rather for acquiring the theory, than with a view to the practice of the profession of the law b . By Sir Harbottle Grimston, who married his grand-daughter, he is described as a man of great modesty, charity, and piety c . He resided in London at the house in Fleet Street, which had been purchased by his lather, and which was a fashionable part of the town before elegance had migrated westward. At his house in Chilton he seems to have maintained with dignity the highly respectable character of a country gentleman ; filling, when his duty required it, the public offices which belonged to that station, and occasionally taking his seat in Parlia- ment. Early in life, when he was twenty-three years of age, in 1553, he married a lady of family, and high connexions, and who had likewise the youthful charms of fifteen. This was Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Alexander Unton. Her family was seated at Chequers in Buckingham- shire, at Faringdon, and Wadley, in Berkshire. In Faringdon church is 1 From his monument. b " John Crooke of London was admitted of the Inner Temple, 10 June, 1 Edward VI. " 151-7." Register of the Inner Temple. 1 Preface to Croke Charles. chap. in. SIR JOHN CROKE. 449 a chapel called Unton's Isle, where are some of their monuments, of which the inscriptions are nearly obliterated, but which have been preserved by Ashmole' 1 . Sir Hugh Unton, the great-grandfather of Lady Elizabeth Croke, married Sybell the daughter and heiress of William Fettiplace, the son of Thomas Fettiplace of Shifford in Buckinghamshire, Esquire, in the time of Henry the Sixth, whose wife was Beatrice, the natural daughter of John the First, King of Portugal. This sovereign married Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, and had by her legitimate children, who suc- ceeded him in the kingdom. By his favourite mistress Ines, or Agnes Perez, he had Beatrice, and a son named Alphonso, who was created Duke of Braganza, and was the ancestor of the present royal family of Portugal. Beatrice had four husbands. The first was Thomas, Earl of Arundel. After his death she became the second wife of the great Gilbert Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, the victorious general of the English forces in France, by whom she had a daughter named Ankaret, who died a child. Thirdly, she married John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon ; and lastly, Thomas Fettiplace, Esquire. Her first and third marriages were unfruitful, and she left only one son, William Fettiplace, by her last hus- band. She was much beloved by her royal father, who upon the death of her first husband, in the fourth year of Henry the Fifth, wrote to Sir John Pelham, a favourite of that monarch, desiring him " to shew the Lady " Beatrice, his daughter, being deprived of her husband, the same favour " he had before shewn her." From this marriage the Untons quartered the arms of Fettiplace ; which are gules, two chevrons, argent : and the Croke family, from this, and another marriage, which will be hereafter mentioned, claims a descent from the royal house of Braganza 6 . d History of Berkshire. Faringdon came to the Crown by the dissolution of Beaulieu Abbey. It was granted by Queen Mary to Sir Francis Englefield, after whose attainder Queen Elizabeth gave it to Sir Henry Unton. In 1622 it was purchased of Sir John Wentworth, and other representatives of the Unton family, by Sir Robert Pye. Wadley, in 1531, was the seat of the Untons: from them it passed by a female to the Purefoys. Henry Purefoy of Wadley was created a baronet in 1662, and the title is now extinct. e D. Antonio Caetano de Sousa, Historia Genealogica da casa real Portuguesa, 6 vols. •ito. Lisbon, 1 739 to 1748. Collins, Baronetage, vol. iii. p. 266. Ashmole's History of Berkshire, vol. ii. p. e <2l3, &c. Monuments at Childrey in Berkshire, Swinbrook in Oxford- 3 M 4.50 SIR JOHN CROKE. book iv. Sir Thomas Unton, the son of Hugh, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, held lands in Fingest in Buckinghamshire ; and was created Knight of the Bath, at the Coronation of Edward the Sixth. His son, Sir Alexander Unton, had two wives; Mary Bourchier, by whom he had no children ; and Cecill, the daughter of Peter Bulstrode, Esquire, of Bradborough in Buckinghamshire, by whom he was the father of Sir Edward Unton, Knight of the Bath, Henry Unton, and Lady Croke. Sir Alexander died in 1547 f . After his death, his widow Cecill married Sir Robert Kellaway, of Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, by whom she had an only daughter Anne, married to Sir John Harrington, Lord Harrington of Exton in Rutlandshire. This nobleman was the eldest son of Sir James Harrington. In the reign of Elizabeth he was Lord Lieu- tenant of Rutlandshire, and Recorder of Coventry. King James in the first year of his reign created him Baron of Exton. He and his lady were appointed to the care and tuition of the princess Elizabeth, who was born in 1596, and afterwards married Frederic the Fifth, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, and King of Bohemia. Lord Exton accompanied her into Germany upon her marriage, where he was taken ill, and died at Worms on the 24th of August, 16 1:3. His widow was living in 1617- His only son survived him only a few months, and died young and unmarried. He left two daughters, who inherited the property. Of whom Lucy married Henry, Earl of Bedford, to whom she brought an estate at Minster Lovell, and ten thousand pounds in money. Frances, the other sister, and co-heiress, was the first wife of Sir Robert Chichester of Raleigh in Devonshire, Knight of the Bath, by whom she had a daughter, Anne, married to Thomas Lord Bruce, ancestor of the Earl of Aylesbury s. Sir Edward Unton, Knight of the Bath, brother to Lady Elizabeth Croke, married Anne, Countess of Warwick, daughter to Edward Sey- shire, of Anne Fettiplace, married to Edmund Dunch, in Little Wittenham Church in Berkshire. Fuller's Worthies. Vertot's Revolution de Portugal. Anderson's Genealogical Tables, pages 717, 718, 719. Noble's Memoirs of Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 158. f Monument in Faringdon Church. " Wills of Sir John and Lady Elizabeth Croke, and of their son, Sir John Croke. Collins, Uaronetage, vol. ii. p. 227- Holland's Hemologia Anglica, 1620. "5 g t O 3 fe3 pq-B o s«"2 jj b ' w So 5" :i° ►J § 3 2 ill IS:- C S -3 _ - S; "5 o^ 3 ts H^-g i & ~ n- 5- till 5p3 r = Q §1 fa £ a o> m « c" "5 - = 3 -3 - 'E m g I «■=•£ B x e 3 o .is o x ,SJ > ? ■ m / u I! s - t« - rr - - (2 D - — Si >* ;* " H1 - zi C O Nil s £ -a m ,; s ts 1 J; 33 in" S i § > ■ ^ eg SB •= £»P = R Jllllfl H < U so J"n-B ^-3 o - to MSo nu W II O ^ - A ^- - &C"S.3 O § chap. in. SIR JOHN CROKE. 451 mour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of England, widow of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and son of the Duke of Northumberland, by whom she had five sons, of whom three died young ; Edward and Henry only survived, and succeeded one after the other, in their father's in- heritance. Of the two daughters, Anne, married Sir Valentine Knightley, and Cecill to John Wentworth, Esquire h . Of the two sons, the nephews of Lady Elizabeth Croke, Edward Unton married two wives ; first, a daughter of Sir Richard Knightley of Northamptonshire ; and secondly, Catharine, daughter of the Lord Hastings, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon, but left no issue by either. The other son, Sir Henry Unton, was ed