Second son of Samuel Croft, he was born at Beamsley, a hamlet in the chapelry of Bolton Abbey, Skipton, West Riding of Yorkshire, and baptised on 27 March 1747.
Carr taught Croft without fee, and solicited subscriptions from well-to-do friends and neighbours in order to send him to university.
Admitted as a servitor of University College, Oxford, on 23 October 1762, he was chosen bible clerk on the following 6 December, and in 1768, the first year of its institution, he gained the chancellor's prize for an English essay upon the subject of Artes prosunt reipublicæ.
He left Beverley at Michaelmas 1780, on being named headmaster of Brewood Grammar School, Staffordshire, a post he resigned in 1791 to accept the lectureship of St. Martin's, Birmingham, to which was later added the chaplaincy of St. Bartholomew in the same parish.
From his old college friend John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon, he received in 1802 the rectory of Thwing in the East Riding, which he was allowed to hold, by a dispensation, with the vicarage of Arncliffe.
[1] George Croft published:[1] After his death appeared Sermons, including a series of Discourses on the Minor Prophets, preached before the University of Oxford, 2 vols.