James Crofts (British Army officer)

James Crofts (c. 1683–1732) was an officer of the British Army.

Biography

Born about 1683, Crofts was the natural son of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, by his mistress Eleanor Needham, a daughter of Sir Robert Needham. His father led the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 and was beheaded in July of that year. The surname Crofts had been used by his father.

Crofts entered the Army in the early part of the reign of Queen Anne, rose to the rank of colonel by 1706, and in 1718 succeeded Sir Robert Rich in the command of a regiment of dragoons, which was disbanded later the same year. On 6 July 1719 he obtained the colonelcy of the regiment of dragoons later known as the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, and in 1727 he was promoted to the rank of major-general. He died at his house in Downing Street, London, in March 1732.^[1]

Descendants

Allan Fea states that Crofts married a daughter of Sir Thomas Taylor (“after 1706, when he is described as single”) and had a daughter, Maria Julia; and that she married first a Mr Dalziel and secondly R. Wentworth Smyth-Stuart, who claimed to be Monmouth’s son by Henrietta Maria Wentworth.^[2] John Ferdinand Smyth Stuart claimed to be the son of this marriage, but many of his claims have been challenged by Anthony J. Camp.^[3] In another theory, James Crofts and his mistress Grace Camfield had a daughter who married Gibson Dalziel and was the mother of Maria Julia Dalziel, who then married Colonel Charles Smyth, the son of Monmouth and Lady Wentworth.^[4] However, the mother of Gibson Dalziel’s lawful children was an illegitimate daughter of John Augier.^[5]

References

1. Richard Cannon, Historical Record of the Ninth, or the Queen's Royal Regiment of Lancers (London, 1841) p. 59.
2. Allan Fea, King Monmouth: Being a History of the Career of James Scott "The Protestant Duke" 1649-1685 (1902), pp. 359—361
3. Anthony J. Camp, John Ferdinand Smyth: loyalist and liar Archived 21 January 2020 at the Wayback Machine at anthonyjcamp.com, as published in Genealogists' Magazine, vol. 31, no. 11 (September 2015)
4. English Origins of New England Families: From the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Second Series, Volume 3, pp. 410, 416, 421, 426
5. Gibson Dalzell, born 1698, the son of General Robert Dalziel, died in London in 1756, leaving estates in Jamaica to a daughter, Frances, and a son, Robert. The mother of his children was Susanna Caillard or Augier, daughter of John Augier (d. 1722), a Jamaica planter who freed his illegitimate children (including Susanna) in his will. (Will of Gibson Dalziel, PCC, 1756, ancestry.co.uk (subscription required))

Military offices
Preceded by Sir Robert Rich	Colonel of Crofts' Regiment of Dragoons 1718	Succeeded by Regiment disbanded
Preceded by Owen Wynne	Colonel of Crofts' Regiment of Dragoons 1719–1732	Succeeded by The Viscount Molesworth