Richard Croke, educated at Eton College, had…

Richard Croke, educated at Eton College, had taken his BA at King's College, Cambridge in 1510, and proceeded to travel.

He studied Greek with William Grocyn in London and Oxford, then in 1511 with Erasmus and Aleander in Paris.

He was called in 1514 to the University of Leipzig, where he remained for some years.

Among his pupils were Joachim Camerarius, Hieronymus Dungersheim, and Caspar Creuziger.

He was replaced by Petrus Mosellanus.

As a young man he was identified as a follower of Erasmus, who at this period was constructing his editio princeps of the New Testament in Greek (Basle, 1516).

He was recalled by John Fisher in 1519 to teach Greek at Cambridge; it had been in abeyance since Erasmus's time (1511–13), and he was Cambridge's second lecturer in Greek.

He became public orator in 1522 at Cambridge, in 1523 Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge and in 1524 Doctor of Divinity.

He quarreled with Fisher in the later 1520s over college matters.

He acts for Henry VIII in 1529 and 1530 in Italy, in the matter of the king's intended divorce from Catherine of Aragon; earlier he had tutored Henry in Greek.

He travels to Venice in 1529, reportedly to consult with Jewish Rabbis and "Christian Cabalist" theologians in an attempt to garner Biblical justification for Henry’s intended divorce of Catherine of Aragon and eventual remarriage to an heir-producing mate.

While seeking canon lawyers to support Henry's side of the argument, he also contacts humanists (such as Girolamo Ghinucci) and seeks manuscripts.

On his return to England in 1531, he had become deputy vice-chancellor of Cambridge, and vicar of Long Buckby, Nottinghamshire.

He moves a year later o the University of Oxford.