ad at first joined (the 38th, or 1st Staffordshire
Foot), and in which he had uninterruptedly served. Indeed, he was so
much attached to his regiment, that, in his case at least, the
Staffordshire knot became perfectly symbolic. The closer the knot was
drawn the firmer the tie became. He commenced, continued, and ended an
honourable life of activity in the service of his country from mere
boyhood, until ill-health and a broken constitution forced him to sell
his commission. Thomas Croker was the eldest son of Richard Croker, of
Mount Long in the county of Tipperary, who died on the 1st January, 1771;
and his mother was Anne, the daughter of James Long of Dublin, by the
Honourable Mary Butler, daughter of Theobald the seventh Earl of Cahir.
Thomas Croker was born on the 29th March, 1761. In 1796 he married
Maria, eldest daughter and co-heir of Croker Dillon of Baltidaniel in the
county of Cork, and on the 15th January, 1798, Thomas Crofton Croker was
born at the house of his maternal grandmother in Buckingham Square, Cork,
receiving his first Christian name after his father, and his second after
his godfather, the Honourable Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

While very young, during the years 1812 and 1815, Crofton Croker made
several excursions in the south of Ireland, studying the character and
traditions of the country, on which occasions he was frequently
accompanied by Mr. Joseph Humphreys, a Quaker, afterwards master of the
Deaf and Dumb Institution at Claremont near Dublin. In 1813 he was
placed with the mercantile firm of Messrs. Lecky and Mark, and in 1817 he
appeared as an exhibitor in the second exhibition of the Cork Society,
for he had already displayed considerable talent as an artist. In 1818
he contributed to an ephemeral production called 'The Literary and
Political Examiner:' on the 22nd March of that year his father died, and
he left Ireland, not to revisit it until he made a short excursion there
in 1821 with Alfred Nicholson and Miss Nicholson (who afterwards became
Mrs. Croker), children of the late Mr. Francis Nicholson, one of the
founders of the English water-colour school, and who died in 1844 at the
patriarchal age of ninety-one years.

Crofton Croker's first visit to England was paid to Thomas Moore in
Wiltshire; and soon after his establishing in London he received from the
late Right Hon. John Wilson Croker an appointment at the Admiralty, of
which office his namesake (but no relation) was secre