Samuel Croxall

Samuel Croxall (c.1690 – 1752) was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables.

Samuel Croxall was born in Walton on Thames, where his father (also called Samuel) was vicar. He was educated at Eton and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1711 and entered holy orders. Soon after graduating he began to emerge as a political pamphleteer, taking the Whig side on the question of the Hanoverian succession. In 1713 he published An original canto of Spencer: design'd as part of his Faerie Queene, but never printed, followed next year by Another original canto of Spencer. Croxall's satirical target was the Tory politician of the day, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the choice of poetical model was also politically motivated. In 1706 the Whig turncoat Matthew Prior had used the Spenserian stanza in An Ode, Humbly Inscrib'd to the Queen on the conduct of the War of the Spanish Succession; at the time of Croxall's poems, Prior was negotiating an unpopular peace on behalf of Harley and so the style he had adopted was being turned against him. This was further underlined by Croxall's next political poem, An ode humbly inscrib'd to the king, occasion'd by His Majesty's most auspicious succession and arrival, once more using the Spenserian stanza and published in 1715.

As a reward for his loyal services at a time of disputed succession, Croxall was made chaplain in ordinary to King George I for the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court. Later that year he preached before the king at St Paul's Cathedral on Incendiaries no Christians (on the text of John 13.35) and came into collision with the new Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. Gossip had it that Walpole had stood in the way to some ecclesiastical dignity which Croxall wished to obtain and found himself the object of veiled references to corrupt and wicked ministers of state in the sermon. Since Walpole was a vengeful man, 'it was expected that the doctor for the offence he had given would have been removed from his chaplainship, but the court over-ruled it, as he had always manifested himself to be a zealous friend to the Hanoverian succession'. Croxall continued his compliment to the king in his poem "A Vision", which places the new monarch within the context of the succession of kings and queens of England, presided over by the poets Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser.

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