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 sums thus accrued to them from royalties alone. In 1864 the concern was changed into a limited liability company, and with a view to increasing the interest felt by the employés in the working of the business, a portion of the shares in the new company were offered to them under favourable conditions, and were very generally accepted. Crossley was elected in the liberal interest as M.P. for Halifax, 8 July 1852; he sat for that borough until 1859, when he became the member for the West Riding of Yorkshire. On the division of the riding in 1868 he was returned for the northern division, which he continued to represent to the time of his decease. His generosity was on a princely scale. His first great gift to Halifax consisted in the erection of twenty-one almshouses in 1855, with an endowment which gave six shillings a week to each person. On his return from America in 1855 he announced his intention of presenting the people of Halifax with a park, and on 15 Aug. 1857 this park was opened. It consists of more than twelve acres of ground, laid out from designs by Sir Joseph Paxton, and, with a sum of money invested for its maintenance in 1867, cost the donor 41,300l. About 1860, in conjunction with his brothers John and Joseph, he began the erection of an orphan home and school on Skircoat Moor. This was completed at their sole united cost, and endowed by them with a sum of 3,000l. a year; it is designed for the maintenance of children who have lost one or both parents, and has accommodation for four hundred. In 1870 he founded a loan fund of 10,000l. for the benefit of deserving tradesmen of Halifax, and in the same year presented to the London Missionary Society the sum of 20,000l., the noblest donation the society had ever received. About the same period he gave 10,000l. to the Congregational Pastors' Retiring Fund, and the like sum towards the formation of a fund for the relief of widows of congregational ministers. He was mayor of Halifax in 1849 and 1850, and was created a baronet 23 Jan. 1863. After a long illness he died at Belle Vue, Halifax, 5 Jan. 1872, and was buried in the general cemetery on 12 Jan., when an immense concourse of friends followed his remains to the grave. The will was proved 27 May 1872, when the personalty was sworn under 800,000l. He married, 11 Dec. 1845, Martha Eliza, daughter of Henry Brinton of Kidderminster, by whom he had an only son, Savile Brinton, second baronet, M.P. successively for Lowestoft and for Halifax. He was the author of ‘Canada and the United States,’ a lecture, 1856.

[Drawing-room Portrait Gallery (1859), with portrait; Statesmen of England (1862), with portrait; Sir F. Crossley, Bart., Religious Tract Society, Biog. Ser. No. 1028 (1873); Smiles's Thrift (1875), pp. 205–17; Illustr. News of the World, vol. iii. (1859), with portrait; Times, 6 Jan. 1872, p. 12; Illustr. London News, lx. 55, 57, 587 (1872), with portrait; Family Friend, 1 March 1870, pp. 39–43, with portrait.]  CROSSLEY, JAMES (1800–1883), author, was born at Halifax on 31 March 1800, being the son of James Crossley, a merchant of that town, and Anne, his wife, daughter of William Greenup of Skircoat. He was educated at the grammar schools of Hipperholme and Heath, where he was well grounded in the classics. When he left school in 1816 he went to Manchester, and in the following year was articled to Thomas Ainsworth, solicitor, father of the novelist, W. Harrison Ainsworth [q. v.], whose literary mentor he became. Crossley's father possessed a fair library, and the youth, having a free run of the books, acquired a decided taste for literature, especially for the Latin poets and the old English writers, a predilection which was fostered by Thomas Edwards, the bookseller and binder of Halifax, and further developed by frequent recourse to the Chetham Library at Manchester. Before he was out of his teens he began writing for ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ his first article appearing in January 1820. It was an able essay on Sir Thomas Browne. Other disquisitions soon followed, viz. on ‘Sir Thomas Urquhart's “Jewell”’ (March 1820) on the ‘Literary Characters of Bishop Warburton and Dr. Johnson’ (December 1820); on ‘Beard's Theatre of God's Judgments;’ on ‘Manchester Poetry;’ ‘Manchester versus Manchester Poetry;’ a charming essay on Chetham's Library (June 1821); on ‘Sir Thomas Browne's Letter to a Friend;’ on the ‘Comedy of Eastward Hoe;’ and on Jasper Mayne's ‘City Match.’

When the ‘Retrospective Review’ was started in 1820 he rendered great assistance to the editors, and, among other papers, contributed the following: on ‘Sir Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial,’ ‘Jerome Carden,’ ‘Sir Philip Sidney,’ and ‘The Arcadia’ (reprinted in separate form in 1853); on Fuller's ‘Holy and Profane State;’ and on ‘Quarles's Enchiridion.’ Some years later, it is said, he assisted Lockhart in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ but whether he is answerable for any of the articles in that work is not known.

In 1822 he edited a small duodecimo volume of ‘Tracts by Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, M.D.,’ of which five hundred copies were printed. He intended to bring out a complete edition of Browne's works, but was