George Croft

George Croft (1747–1809) was an English clergyman, one of the early Bampton Lecturers. Life Second son of Samuel Croft, he was born at Beamsley, a hamlet in the chapelry of Bolton Abbey, Skipton, West Riding of Yorkshire, and baptised on 27 March 1747. Although his father was in humble circumstances, Croft was educated at the grammar school of Bolton Abbey, under the Rev. Thomas Carr. Carr taught Croft without fee, and solicited subscriptions from well-to-do friends and neighbours in order to send him to university. Admitted as a servitor of University College, Oxford, on 23 October 1762, he was chosen bible clerk on the following 6 December, and in 1768, the first year of its institution, he gained the chancellor's prize for an English essay upon the subject of Artes prosunt reipublicæ. He graduated B.A. on 16 February 1768, proceeding M.A. on 2 June 1769. Meanwhile, he had been appointed master of Beverley Grammar School on 6 December 1768; and, having been ordained, was elected as a Fellow of University College on 16 July 1779. On 11 December 1779 Croft was instituted by his college to the vicarage of Arncliffe in the West Riding, and on 19 and 21 January 1780 took the two degrees (B.D. and D.D.) in divinity. About this time he became chaplain to the Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin. He left Beverley at Michaelmas 1780, on being named headmaster of Brewood Grammar School, Staffordshire, a post he resigned in 1791 to accept the lectureship of St. Martin's, Birmingham, to which was later added the chaplaincy of St. Bartholomew in the same parish. He took a particularly strong polemical line in preaching against local Dissenters, who from 1780 included Joseph Priestley. On 12 October 1780, Croft married Ann, daughter of William Grimston of Ripon, by whom he had a son and six daughters.