CREWE, John II (1603-70), of Utkinton, Tarporley, Cheshire.

Crewe belonged to a cadet branch of the ancient Cheshire family of De Crue, which had taken its name from the manor of Crewe in the twelfth century.22PROB11/196, f. 102v; Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. pt.1, pp. 305-6, 309-10, 313-14. His grandfather was a tanner whose immediate forebears were probably tradesmen in Nantwich.23HP Commons 1604-1629; ‘Sir Randolph Crewe’, Oxford DNB. His father, Sir Ranulphe Crewe†, an eminent Lincoln’s Inn barrister and Speaker of the Commons in the 1614 ‘Addled’ Parliament, sat for the Northamptonshire borough of Brackley in 1597 and for the Cornish constituency of Saltash in 1614; and his elder brother, Sir Clippesby Crewe†, represented Downton, Wiltshire, in 1624 and 1625 and Callington, Cornwall, in 1626.24HP Commons 1604-1629. Although Sir Ranulphe has been identified as a man of puritan sympathies, that did not deter him from having the chapel he built at Crewe Hall in the mid-1630s consecrated by the pro-Laudian bishop of Chester John Bridgeman.25HP Commons 1604-1629; W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court, 204; G. B. Blomfield, Two Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Crewe Hall (Chester, 1871); ‘John Bridgeman’, Oxford DNB. At his death in 1646, Sir Ranulphe was described as ‘a religious good man and firm for the Parliament, and ... of his own charge, found and maintained in Cheshire for service of the Parliament during all the time of the late wars ... ten soldiers and two horses, and men bravely furnished’.26Civil War in Cheshire, 193-4. Sir Clippesby Crewe, on the other hand, was appointed to the Cheshire commission of array and seems to have inclined towards the king’s party.27Northants. RO, FH133; Cheshire RO, DLT/B11, p. 76; HP Commons 1604-1629.

At Crewe’s marriage in 1636 to Mary, daughter and coheir of Sir John Done of Utkinton, his father settled on him lands worth £500 a year, while his bride brought with her a sizeable estate in Cheshire.28Cheshire RO, DAR/I/29 (Memo. bk.: ‘Purchases and fines’); Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 75-6. Mary and her sister Jane were patrons of the rectory of Tarporley, and two years after Mary’s marriage to Crewe they presented the godly minister Nathaniel Lancaster to the living.29IND1/70001, f. 117v; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 76. Lancaster went on to become one of Cheshire’s leading Presbyterian ministers and chaplain to the regiment commanded by the county’s parliamentarian commander, Sir William Brereton*.30A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (Woodbridge, 1990), 144-5; ‘Nathaniel Lancaster’, Oxford DNB.

Crewe was among the group of Cheshire gentlemen that backed the return of Brereton and Peter Venables to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640.31Supra, ‘Cheshire’; C219/43/1/77-8; R. Cust, P. Lake, Gentry Culture, Confessional Politics and the Coming of Civil War: Cheshire, c.1590-42 (Manchester, forthcoming), 182. He did not sign the Cheshire petitions of February and December 1641 that Brereton’s main political antagonist in the county, Sir Thomas Aston*, organised in favour of episcopacy. Indeed, Brereton seems to have looked to Crewe to help him discredit his pro-episcopal opponents in Cheshire.32Add. 36914, f. 211; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 273, 310, 360. Nevertheless, Crewe did sign the ‘Attestation’ to Parliament of mid-1641, in which (Sir) George Boothe*, Henry Birkhened* and other leading Cheshire gentlemen dissociated themselves from the excesses both of Aston and his pro-episcopacy campaign and of the county’s puritan group under Brereton.33Add. 36913, ff. 78-80; Morrill, Cheshire, 46, 51-2. In May 1642, Crewe joined many of Cheshire’s leading gentry in a petition to the king, requesting that he return to Westminster rather than go to Ireland (as he then planned) and thereby abandon England to the ‘popish faction’.34Add. 36913, ff. 60r-v; Humble Petition of the Gentry, Ministers and Free-holders of the County Palatine of Chester (1642, 669 f.5.17); Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 327-8. Crewe was also among the Cheshire gentry – both future royalists and future parliamentarians – who signed the ‘neutralist’ Remonstrance that circulated in the county during the late summer, urging joint action by king and Parliament to prevent the ‘dissolution of the fabric of this blessed government’.35Harl. 2107, ff. 6r-v; Morrill, Cheshire, 58-9; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 338-41; R.N. Dore, ‘1642: the coming of civil war to Cheshire’, Trans. Lancs. and Cheshire Antiquarian Soc. lxxxvii. 51.

Crewe seems to have aligned with Parliament during the civil war without apparently contributing very much to its cause. Although he was named to the Cheshire county committee early in 1643, contributed at least £30 towards the maintenance of the parliamentary army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and was included on a May 1643 royalist list of enemy officers active in the county, he abandoned Utkinton during the war (possibly as early as September 1642) for his father’s residence in Westminster – which would explain why he attended no Cheshire quarter sessions meetings between July 1642 and January 1648.36SP28/196, f. 478; Cheshire RO, DAR/I/29 (Memo. bk.: ‘1643’); QJB 1/6, ff. 73, 146; ZCR 63/2/695; HMC Portland, i. 96; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 76; A. and O.; Wanklyn, ‘Landed Society’, 237-8. In his will, written in 1645, Sir Ranulphe bequeathed Crewe his house in Westminster and also £500, remarking in the margin alongside that ‘he will have need of it, God knoweth’.37PROB11/196, f. 101v.

Brereton seems to have kept the Crewe family informed of events in Cheshire, writing both to Crewe and to his sister-in-law Mary Done – although it is possible that Brereton’s correspondent was in fact Crewe’s Northamptonshire cousin, the prominent Long Parliament MP John Crewe I (Crewe has sometimes been confused not only with his illustrious cousin, but also with his nephew John Crewe of Crewe, who served as sheriff of Cheshire in 1651-2).38Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 74-6; ii. 241-2, 321-2, 469; Ormerod, Cheshire, ii. pt. 1, p. 252; Morrill, Cheshire, 86; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 460. Crewe’s correspondents included Brereton’s Staffordshire friend John Swynfen*, who would emerge during the later 1640s as a leading figure in the Westminster Presbyterian interest.39Cheshire RO, DAR/F/28: Swynfen to Crewe, 6, 28 June, 6 July 1646. Swynfen and Crewe collaborated in 1646 in an attempt (apparently unsuccessful) to arrange a match between an unnamed gentleman and a daughter of another of Brereton’s friends, Sir Richard Skeffington*.40Cheshire RO, DAR/F/28: Swynfen to Crewe, 28 June 1646.

With the end of the fighting in Cheshire early in 1646, Crewe seems to have divided his time between his estates in the north west and his Westminster residence.41Cheshire RO, DAR/F/28: P. Jones to Crewe, 15 June, 12, 21 July 1646. He was active on the Cheshire bench and as a member of the county committee from about mid-1647 until the autumn of 1648.42SP28/224, ff. 270, 275, 306, 307, 327; SP28/225, ff. 504, 508, 653; Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 429. However, he ceased to attend quarter sessions meeting after October 1648; and in July 1650, he and (Sir) George Boothe – one of Cheshire’s most prominent Presbyterian gentlemen – were removed from the bench.43Cheshire RO, QJB 1/6, f. 185; C231/6, p. 196. Their political rehabilitation seems to have begun in October 1653, when both men were restored to their former places on the Chester commission of peace.44C231/6, p. 271. It was probably as friends and close political allies that Boothe and Crewe were among the four men returned for Cheshire to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, apparently taking the second and third places respectively.45Supra, ‘Cheshire’. Crewe’s appeal to the Cheshire voters probably rested in part on his standing as one of the county’s greater landowners – his estate being worth in excess of £1,000 a year.46Cheshire RO, DAR/C/4. But his links with Boothe suggest that may also have owed his return to his perceived association with the Presbyterian interest in the county. Crewe received no committee appointments in this Parliament, and it seems probable that, like Boothe, he failed to take his seat.47Supra, ‘George Boothe’.

Crewe’s lack of involvement in proceedings at Westminster in 1654-5 is consistent with his apparent failure to seek re-election thereafter. Somewhat surprisingly, Crewe ‘and his sister Done’ were among those who supported the candidacy of the republican and regicide John Bradshawe* in the Cheshire elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659. Bradshawe’s electoral interest was dominated by the county’s more radical gentry, but also included prominent former royalists.48Supra, ‘Cheshire’; Bodl. Top. Cheshire e.3, f. 22v; Morrill, Cheshire, 296. One authority has suggested that Crewe was implicated in Sir George Boothe’s Presbyterian-royalist rising in Cheshire in 1659.49Morrill, Cheshire, 310. But the ‘John Crew’ listed among the prisoners taken after the rising had been suppressed was probably John Crewe of Crewe.50Ormerod, Cheshire, i. pt. 1, p. lxvi. Had the former MP been involved in the rising then he would almost certainly have been listed among those rebels who were removed from the Cheshire bench or indicted at the county’s quarter sessions in October 1659.51C231/6, p. 442; SP18/205/7, f. 9. Moreover, the fact that Crewe retained his place on the bench at the Restoration – which has been adduced as evidence of his open support for the royal cause in 1659 – can be explained simply by the crown’s desire to court leading Presbyterians. Crewe’s cousin John Crewe I, created Baron Crew of Steane in 1661, was another prominent Presbyterian who profited from this policy; and, as part of the deputation that met the king at The Hague in May 1660, he may well have secured the royal pardon that Crewe II received in January 1661.52Supra, ‘John Crewe I’; Cheshire RO, DAR/C/84/8-9; DAR/F/64. Crewe had another friend well-placed in royal circles, the antiquary and herald William Dugdale.53Add. 6396, ff. 17, 19.

Crewe conformed to the established Church of England after 1662 while helping to succour ejected Presbyterian ministers – although he stopped short of employing one as his domestic chaplain.54Oliver Heywood Autobiog. and Diaries ed. J. H. Turner (Brighouse, 1882), i. 224, 228, 258; Oliver Heywood’s Life of John Angier ed. E. Axon (Chetham Soc. n.s. xcvii), 86-7. He died in the spring of 1670 and was buried at Tarporley on 14 May.55Ormerod, Cheshire, ii. pt. 1, p. 249. In his will, he bequeathed £3,000 to his daughter Elizabeth for her portion – half of which sum had been left to him by his sister-in-law Jane Done. His legatees included his cousin John Crewe I and Peter the son of Nathaniel Lancaster.56Cheshire RO, WS 1678, will of John Crewe. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.