Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/129

 ,’ 1706.  ‘Battle of Ramillies,’ 1706.  ‘Union of England and Scotland,’ 1707.  ‘Battle of Oudenarde,’ 1708. . ‘Capture of Sardinia and Minorca,’ 1708.  ‘Citadel of Lille taken,’ 1708.  ‘City of Tournay taken,’ 1709.  ‘Battle of Malplaquet,’ 1709.  ‘Douay taken,’ 1710.  ‘Battle of Almenara,’ 1710.  ‘The French lines passed, and Bouchain taken,’ 1711.  ‘Peace of Utrecht,’ 1713 (Med. Ill. ii. 399–401). . Medallic portrait of Queen Anne, circ. A.D. 1704, no reverse (Med. Ill. ii. 417, No. 291). —  ‘Arrival in England,’ 1714. <li> ‘Entry into London,’ 1714. <li> ‘Coronation,’ 1714 (official medal: several pairs of dies used). <li> ‘Battle of Sheriffmuir,’ 1715. <li> ‘Preston taken,’ 1715. <li> ‘Act of Grace,’ 1717. <li>‘Treaty of Passarowitz,’ 1718. <li> ‘Naval Action off Cape Passaro,’ 1718. <li> ‘Caroline, Princess of Wales,’ 1718. <li> ‘Order of the Bath revived,’ 1725. <li> ‘Sir Isaac Newton,’ 1726.</ol> — <li> ‘Coronation of George II,’ 1727 (official medal). <li> ‘Queen Caroline, Coronation’ (official), 1727. <li> ‘Second Treaty of Vienna,’ 1731. <li> ‘Medal of the Royal Family,’ 1732, obverse; (rev. by J. S. Tanner).</ol>

A few of the reverses attached to Croker's obverses were made by Samuel Bull, one of the engravers at the English mint during the reigns of Anne and George I (see Med. Illust. ii. 296, 297, 317, 363, 374, 722). His constant signature is S. B.

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<section begin="Croker, John Wilson"/>CROKER, JOHN WILSON (1780–1857), politician and essayist, was born in Galway, 20 Dec. 1780. He was the son of John Croker, a man of an old Devonshire stock, who was for many years surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland, and is spoken of by Burke as ‘a man of great abilities and most amiable manner, an able and upright public steward, and universally beloved and respected in private life.’ His mother was the daughter of the Rev. R. Rathbone of Galway. Such being his parentage, Croker, with the usual accuracy of rancorous journalists, was in after years denounced as a man of ‘low birth, the son of a country gauger.’ He was obviously a bright, clever boy, and amiable also, if we may credit Sheridan Knowles, to whose father's school in Cork Croker was sent when very young to have a stutter corrected, which he never entirely conquered. When only nine years old he made his first essay in authorship in an election squib during a Cork election. He afterwards spent some time at a school there founded by French refugees, where he attained a facility in reading, writing, and speaking their language. At a Mr. Willis's school in Portarlington he was at twelve years old ‘head of the school, facile princeps in every branch,’ and the pride of the masters. By this time he was able to translate the first Eclogue and the first book of the Æneid of Virgil into verse founded on the model of Pope's Homer, which he had learned by heart. A year or two at another and more classical school, also at Portarlington, kept by the Rev. Richmond Hood, who in later years became the second Sir Robert Peel's classical tutor, prepared him for Trinity College, Dublin, where he was entered in November 1796. Tom Moore was there, a year or two his senior, and he met of his own class Strangford, Leslie Foster, Gervais, Fitzgibbon, Coote, and others who rose afterwards to social and professional distinction. During his four years at Trinity College, where he took a B.A. degree, Croker won a distinguished place among his contemporaries, and was conspicuous as a speaker in the debates of the Historical Society, besides gaining several medals for essays marked by extensive information as well as literary power. In 1800 he entered himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and during the two following years devoted himself to legal study there. But the bent of his mind was essentially literary. The incidents of the French revolution had taken a strong hold upon his mind, and he had already made progress in that minute study of the revolutionary epoch which ultimately led to his forming a remarkable collection of French contemporary pamphlets, now in the British Museum, and made him probably the best informed man in England about all details of this period of French history. A series of letters addressed to Tallien which he wrote introduced him to a<section end="Croker, John Wilson"/>