Crew’s grandfather was a tanner of Nantwich, who put his two sons to the law. Both became Speakers of the House of Commons, a record which remains unique. Crew, a moderate Parliamentarian in the Civil War, was imprisoned at Pride’s Purge. Though summoned to Cromwell’s ‘Other House’, he never took his seat. He returned to Westminster with the secluded Members, and moved the resolution condemning the execution of Charles I.
Crew was returned for Northamptonshire for the third time at the general election of 1660. It is probable that most of the 19 references in the Journals are to him rather than to his son. He derived additional political weight from the part played by his son-in-law Edward Montagu I in the Restoration. His only known speech was unfortunate; Samuel Pepys records on 29 Apr. 1660 that, according to Montagu, ‘Mr Crew did go a little too far the other day in keeping out the young lords from sitting’. He served on the committees for the abolition of the court of wards and the continuance of the Convention, and took part in drawing up the instructions for the messengers to the King and the conference on the King’s reception. He was one of the delegation that met Charles II at The Hague. After the King’s return, as a leading Presbyterian he seems to have been chiefly interested in the bill for settling ministers, helping to draw up a proviso on crown livings on 1 Sept. and to manage a conference on 10 Sept.
Crew received a peerage in the coronation honours, and retired from public life. His Northamptonshire estate was estimated at £1,660 p.a. Pepys describes his household as ‘the best family in the world for goodness and sobriety’. There is no evidence that he conformed, and on Christmas Eve 1662 he lamented the fate of ‘the poor ministers who are put out, to whom, he says, the King is beholden for his coming in, and that if any such thing had been foreseen, he had never come in’. He was reckoned an opposition peer from 1675 till his death. He died on 12 Dec. 1679 and was buried at Steane.