CROKER, JOHN WILSON (178o-18S7), British states man and author, was born at Galway on Dec. 20, 178o, being the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise of Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1800. Immediately afterwards he was entered at Lincoln's Inn, and in 1802 he was called to the Irish bar. His interest in the French Revolution led him to collect a large number of valuable documents on the subject, which are now in the British Museum. In 1804 he published anonymously Familiar Epistles to J. F. Jones, Esquire, on the State of the Irish Stage, a caustic satire in verse on the management of the Dublin theatres, which ran through five editions in one year. Equally successful were the Intercepted Letter from Canton (18o5 ), a satire on Dublin society, and The State of Ireland, Past and Pres ent (1807 ), in which he advocated Catholic emancipation.
In 1807 he entered parliament as member for Downpatrick and in 1808 became deputy chief secretary for Ireland to Sir Arthur Wellesley. This connection led to a friendship which remained unbroken until Wellington's death. His speech (March 14, 1809) defending the duke of York against the charges of Colonel Wardle won for him in 181 o the office of secretary to the Admiralty, which he held without interruption under various administrations for more than twenty years. Among the first acts of his official career was the exposure of a fellow-official who had misappropriated the public funds to the extent of I2oo,o00.
A determined opponent of the Reform Bill, he vowed that he would never sit in a reformed parliament; his parliamentary career accordingly terminated in 1832. Two years earlier he had retired from his post at the Admiralty on a pension of fi,5oo a year. Croker had been an ardent supporter of Peel, but finally broke with him when he began to advocate the repeal of the Corn Laws. He is said to have been the first to use (Jan. 183o) the term "conservatives." He was for many years one of the leading con tributors on literary and historical subjects to the Quarterly Review, with which he had been associated from its foundation. The rancorous spirit in which many of his articles were written did much to embitter party feeling. It also reacted unfavourably on Croker's literary reputation. He had no sympathy with the younger school of poets who were in revolt against the artificial methods of the i8th century, and he was responsible for the famous Quarterly article on Keats. It is, nevertheless, unjust to judge Croker by the criticisms which Macaulay brought against his magnum opus, his edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (1831) . Croker made no reply, but when the first two volumes of the History appeared he took the opportunity of pointing out inaccuracies in the work. Croker was occupied for several years on an annotated edition of Pope's works. It was left at the time of his death and afterwards completed by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin and Mr. W. J. Courthope. He died at St. Albans Bank, Hampton, on Aug. 1 o, The chief works of Croker not already frientioned were his Stories for Children from the History of England (1817) , which suggested Scott's Tales of a Grandfather; Military Events of the French Revolu tion of 183o (1831) ; and several lyrical pieces of some merit, such as the Songs of Trafalgar (1806) ; and The Battles of Talavera (1809). He also edited the Suffolk Papers (1823), Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II. (1817), the Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1821-22), and Walpole's Letters to Lord Hertford (1824). His memoirs, diaries and correspondence were edited by Louis J. Jennings in 1884 under the title of The Croker Papers (3 vols.).