CROW INDIANS, or Absarokas (the name for a species of hawk), a tribe of North American Indians of Siouan stock. They are now settled to the number of some 1800 on a reservation in southern Montana to the south of the Yellowstone river. Their original range included this reservation and extended eastward and southward, and no part of the country for hundreds of miles around was safe from their raids. They have ever been known as marauders and horse-stealers, and, though they have generally been cunning enough to avoid open war with the whites, they have robbed them whenever opportunity served. Physically they are tall and athletic, with very dark complexions.
CROWLAND, or Croyland, a market-town in the S. Kesteven or Stamford parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England; in a low fen district on the river Welland, 8 m. N.E. of Peterborough, and 4 m. from Postland station on the March-Spalding line of the Great Northern and Great Eastern railways, and Peakirk on the Great Northern. Pop. (1901) 2747. A monastery was founded here in 716 by King Æthelbald, in honour of St Guthlac of Mercia (d. 714), a young nobleman who became a hermit and lived here, and, it was said, had foretold Æthelbald’s accession to the throne. The site of St Guthlac’s cell, not far from the abbey, is known as Anchor (anchorite’s) Church Hill. After the abbey had suffered from the Danish incursions in 870, and had been burnt in that year and in 1091, a fine Norman abbey was raised in 1113. Remains of this building appear in the ruined nave and tower arch, but the most splendid fragment is the west front, of Early English date, with Perpendicular restoration. The west tower is principally in this style. The north aisle is restored and used as the parish church. Among the abbots was Ingulphus (1085-1109), to whom was formerly attributed the Historia Monasterii Croylandensis. A curious triangular bridge remains, apparently of the 14th century, but referred originally to the middle of the 9th century, which spanned three streams now covered, and affords three footways which meet at an apex in the middle.
The town of Crowland grew up round the abbey. By a charter dated 716, Æthelbald granted the isle of Crowland, free from all secular services, to the abbey with a gift of money, and leave to build and enclose the town. The privileges thus obtained were confirmed by numerous royal charters extending over a period of nearly 800 years. Under Abbot Ægelric the fens were tilled, the monastery grew rich, and the town increased in size, enormous tracts of land being held by the abbey at the Domesday Survey. The town was nearly destroyed by fire (1469-1476), but the abbey tenants were given money to rebuild it. By virtue of his office the abbot had a seat in parliament, but the town was never a parliamentary borough. Abbot Ralph Mershe in 1257 obtained a grant of a market every Wednesday, confirmed by Henry IV. in 1421, but it was afterwards moved to Thorney. The annual fair of St Bartholomew, which originally lasted twelve days, was first mentioned in Henry III.’s confirmatory charter of 1227. The dissolution of the monastery in 1539 was fatal to the progress of the town, which had prospered under the thrifty rule of the monks, and it rapidly sank into the position of an unimportant village. The abbey lands were granted by Edward VI. to Lord Clinton, from whose family they passed in 1671 to the Orby family. The inhabitants formerly carried on considerable trade in fish and wild fowl.
See R. Gough, History and Antiquities of Croyland (Bibl. Top. Brit. iii. No. 11) (London, 1783); W. G. Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (Camb. Antiq. Soc., No. 27); Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 91 (London, 1846; Cambridge, 1894).
CROWLEY, ROBERT (1518?-1588), English religious and social reformer, was born in Gloucestershire, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he was successively demy and fellow. Coming to London, he set up a printing-office in Ely Rents, Holborn, where he printed many of his own writings. As a typographer, his most notable production was an edition of Pierce Plowman in 1550, and some of the earliest Welsh printed books came from his press. As an author, his first venture seems to have been his “Information and Petition against the Oppressors of the poor Commons of this realm,” which internal evidence shows to have been addressed to the parliament of 1547. It contains a vigorous plea for a further religious reformation, but is more remarkable for its attack on the “more than Turkish tyranny” of the landlords and capitalists of that day. While repudiating communism, Crowley was a Christian Socialist, and warmly approved the efforts of Protector Somerset to stop enclosures. In his Way to Wealth, published in 1550, he laments the failure of the Protector’s policy, and attributes it to the organized resistance of the richer classes. In the same year he published (in verse) The Voice of the last Trumpet blown by the seventh Angel; it is a rebuke in twelve “lessons” to twelve different classes of people; and a similar production was his One-and-Thirty Epigrams (1550). These, with Pleasure and Pain (1551), were edited for the Early English Text Society in 1872 (Extra Ser. xv.). The dozen or more other works which Crowley published are more distinctly theological: indeed, the failure of the temporal policy he advocated seems to have led Crowley to take orders, and he was ordained deacon by Ridley on the 29th of September 1551. During Mary’s reign he was among the exiles at Frankfort. At Elizabeth’s accession he became a popular preacher, was made archdeacon of Hereford in 1559, and prebendary of St Paul’s in 1563, and was incumbent first of St Peter’s the Poor in London, and then of St Giles’ without Cripplegate. He refused to minister in the “conjuring garments of popery,” and in 1566 was deprived and imprisoned for resisting the use of the surplice by his choir. He stated his case in “A brief Discourse against the Outward Apparel and Ministering Garments of the Popish Church,” a tract “memorable,” says Canon Dixon, “as the first distinct utterance of Nonconformity.” He continued to preach occasionally, and in 1576 was presented to the living of St Lawrence Jewry. Nor had he abandoned his connexion with the book trade, and in 1578 he was admitted a freeman of the Stationers’ Company. He died on the 18th of June 1588, and was buried in St Giles’. The most important of his works not hitherto mentioned is his continuation of Languet and Cooper’s Epitome of Chronicles (1559).
See J. M. Cowper’s Pref. to the Select Works of Crowley (1872); Strype’s Works; Gough’s General Index to Parker Soc. Publ.; Machyn’s Diary; Macray’s Reg. Magdalen College; Newcourt’s Rep. Eccles. Lond.; Hennessy’s Nov. Rep. Eccl. (1898); Le Neve’s Fasti Eccl. Angl.; Pocock’s Burnet; Pollard’s England under Somerset; R. W. Dixon’s Church History.
(A. F. P.)