William Croft was born on 30 December 1678 at Nether Ettington in Warwickshire into a prosperous family distantly related to the Crofts of Croft Castle in Herefordshire. William probably owed his place in the Chapel Royal to a member of this branch of the family, Herbert Croft, Dean of the Chapel Royal (1668–70) and later Bishop of Hereford. He studied with John Blow, and became a Gentleman Extraordinary of the Chapel in 1704; he succeeded Jeremiah Clarke as one of the three Chapel Organists in 1707, and Blow as Master of the Children in 1708; he also succeeded his teacher as organist of Westminster Abbey. Thus, Croft reached the top of his profession by the age of thirty and spent the rest of his career in an uneventful round of Chapel and Abbey, broken only by occasional visits to provincial cathedrals. He died in Bath, where he had gone to take the waters, on 14 August 1727.