Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/218

 dramatist wrongly describes Crosby as mayor, an office which he did not live to fill.) On 21 May 1471 he accompanied the mayor, aldermen, and principal citizens to meet King Edward between Shoreditch and Islington, on the king's return to London; and here he received the honour of knighthood.

In 1472 Crosby was employed by the king in a confidential mission as one of the commissioners for settling the differences between Edward IV and the Duke of Burgundy. They were afterwards to proceed to Brittany, having secret instructions to capture the Earls of Richmond and Pembroke, who had been driven by a storm to the coast of Brittany, and were detained by Francis, the reigning duke. In this they were not successful, but in the following year Crosby was again despatched with others on a mission to the Duke of Burgundy (, xi. 738, 778). He was also mayor of the Staple of Calais.

Crosby was now building the sumptuous mansion in Bishopsgate Street which has chiefly made his name famous, having in 1466 obtained from Dame Alice Ashfelde, prioress of the convent of St. Helen's, a lease of certain lands and tenements for a term of ninety-nine years, at a rent of 11l. 6s. 8d. This grand structure had a frontage of 110 feet in Bishopsgate Street, and extended to a great depth, as the foundations showed. Stow describes the house as very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London. After Crosby's death it was the successive abode of many celebrated persons. Fires in 1666 and 1672 destroyed all but the hall. Crosby Hall was restored 1836–42 and was used as a restaurant 1860–1907; it was demolished early in 1908.

Crosby died in 1475, and was buried in St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, where the altar-tomb erected to his memory and that of his first wife, Agnes, still exists. By his first marriage he had several children who died during his lifetime. He married secondly Anne, the daughter of William Chedworth, who survived him and was probably the mother of a John Crosby who presented Robert Henshaw to the living of Hanworth in 1498. The previous presentation was made in 1476 by the trustees of Crosby's real estate, doubtless in consequence of the minority of his son. The male line of his descendants appears afterwards to have become extinct, and the reversion of the presentation seems to have fallen to the crown. Besides many other legacies for pious and charitable purposes, Crosby left the large sum of 100l. for the repairs of London Bridge, a similar sum for repairing Bishop's Gate, and 10l. for the repairs of Rochester Bridge. His will (179, Wattis), dated 6 March 1471, was proved in the prerogative court of Canterbury 6 Feb. 1475–6, and is printed at length in Gough's ‘Sepulchral Monuments,’ v. 3, app. 4. 

CROSBY, THOMAS (fl. 1740), author of ‘History of the Baptists,’ resided at Horselydown, where he kept a mathematical and commercial school. He was a deacon, and not as generally supposed the minister, of the baptist church at that place. He supplied Neal with much of the information regarding the baptists in the ‘History of the Puritans.’ He died subsequently to 1749, in which year his last work, ‘The Book-keeper's Guide,’ was published. His ‘History of the English Baptists, from the Reformation to the beginning of the reign of George I’ (1738–40, 4 vols. 8vo), is very valuable on account of the biographical notices of the earlier baptist ministers it contains, but in other respects it is almost useless by the studious disregard the author showed as to distinguishing the many and widely differing sections of the baptist body, which renders it never clear and frequently misleading. The work gave considerable offence to the baptists when it appeared, and subsequent historians of that sect have usually avoided giving the work as an authority. As a mere reciter of events Crosby is trustworthy. Most of the materials used were collected by Benjamin Stinton, a baptist minister (d. 1718), who had intended to write a history. Crosby also wrote ‘A Brief Reply to Mr. John Lewis's History of the Rise and Progress of Anabaptism in England,’ 1738. 

CROSDILL, JOHN (1751?–1825), violoncellist, was born in London either in 1751 or 1755, and educated in the choir of Westminster Abbey under Robinson and Cooke. At Westminster he became acquainted with Lord Fitzwilliam, with whom a schoolboy friendship sprang up which endured during the greater part of his life. On leaving the choir he studied the violoncello with Jean Pierre Duport, and probably also with his father, who was a violoncellist of some fame. In 1764 Crosdill played in a duet for two violoncellos at a concert given by Siprutini.