Cecilia Crofts  Cecilia Crofts (d. 1638), courtier and maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, subject of poems. Cecilia Crofts was the sixth daughter of Sir John Crofts (1563-1628) of Little Saxham, Suffolk, and Mary Shirley daughter of Sir Thomas Shirley of Witneston or Wiston. Her eldest brother was Henry Crofts. King James I was entertained by Sir John Crofts at Little Saxham with a masque and in February 1620 the "fair sisters" put on or planned another masque for Shrove Tuesday "of their own invention". There was a masque for the king at Little Saxham in December 1621. A masque text survives, known as "The Vision of the Nine Goddesses" performed by the eight Croft sisters including Cecilia Crofts, Dorothy, Lady Bennet, and Anne Crofts, Lady Wentworth. Each of the goddesses was introduced by a verse sung an actor playing Apollo, but the text does not say which sister played which goddess. Around this time Simonds d'Ewes recorded a rumour that the king had married "Sissilia Crafts", a woman he might have married himself, if he had the means. King James had given one of Sir John Croft's unmarried daughters, probably Cecilia, a carcanet or necklace worth £500 on Shrove Tuesday 1620. James denied the rumour in March 1622, declaring he was "King of the most lying nation in the world". In 1631 she competed with Richard Forster to gain the profits and rents of four coal mines at Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne; Stumple Wood Head, Crossflatt, Goreflat, and Meadow Fields. Her brother Anthony Crofts and Lord Goring assisted her successful counter-petition. Forster had to settle with Sir Peter Riddell of Gateshead, the entrepreneur who owned the mines. Cecilia Crofts took part in Walter Montagu's masque "The Shepheard's Paradise" at Somerset House in 1633. Sir Robert Ayton's poem, "Upon Platonic Love: To Mistress Cicely Crofts: Maid of Honour", has been connected with the treatment of neo-Platonism in Montagu's masque, but may have been written in earlier years. Sir John Suckling's "To Mrs Cicely Crofts" deals with corporality, "You are all ethereal; there's in you no dross".