James Croft

Sir James Croft PC (c.1518 – 4 September 1590) was an English politician, who was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and MP for Herefordshire in the Parliament of England. Life He was born the second but eldest surviving son of Sir Richard Croft of Croft Castle and his second wife Catherine Herbert, daughter of Sir Richard Herbert of Herefordshire, inheriting the estate on his father's death in 1562. He was elected eight times as knight of the shire (MP) for Herefordshire (1542, 1563, 1571, 1572,1584, 1586 and 1589) and knighted in 1547. During the Anglo-Scottish war of the Rough Wooing, Sir James was made commander of Haddington after James Wilford was captured in 1549. He was appointed lord deputy of Ireland on 23 May 1551. There he effected little beyond gaining for himself the reputation of a conciliatory disposition. On 21 December 1551, he wrote from Kilmainham to his former enemy Mary of Guise in Scotland, negotiating an exchange of hostages;"Consydering the peaxe betwext the king my master and your grace, with the honnour that I had of your highness when I was at Haddington, it hath made me the bolder to become an humble suiter to your grace." In January 1552 he was commissioned to look into the state of mining in Ireland and a controversy between the miners Robert Recorde and Joachym Goodenfynger. He acquired Tintern Abbey which later passed to the Colclough Baronets.