According to Grosart, in the D.N.B., Thomas Bancroft flourished from 1633 to 1658. A native of Swarston, Derbyshire, he attended St. Catherine's at Cambridge in 1613, and was there a friend and contemporary of James Shirley. When his oldest brother died in 1639 the family property was broken up. Grosart lists four works of the poet: The Glutton's Feaver (1633), Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs (1639), a poem to the memory of Lord Hastings in Brome's Lachrymae Musarum (1649), and The Heroicall Lover, or Antheon and Fidelta (1658). In 1658 he was living at Bradley. He was known traditionally in Derbyshire as “the small poet.”