suc. bro. 30 Nov. 1697 as 3rd Bar. CREW
cons. 2 July 1671 bp. OXFORD; transl. 28 Oct. 1674 bp. DURHAM
First sat 30 Oct. 1672; last sat 14 Dec. 1715
b. 31 Jan. 1634, 5th s. of John Crew, Bar. Crew, and Jemima (d.1675), da. of Edward Waldegrave of Lawford, Essex; bro. of Thomas Crew, 2nd Bar. Crew. educ. privately (Henry Bishop); Chenies Sch., Amersham (Mr Azall); G. Inn 1652; Lincoln Coll., Oxf., matric. 1653, BA 1656, fell. 1656, MA 1658; fell. in canon law 1659; incorp. Camb. 1659; DCL 1664; ord. deacon and priest 1665. m. (1) 21 Dec. 1691, Penelope (d.1699), da. of Sir Philip Frowde, of Kent and wid. of Sir Hugh Tynte, mayor of Guildford, s.p.; (2) 23 July 1700, Dorothy (d.1715), da. of Sir William Forster, of Bamburgh, Northumberland, s.p. d. 18 Sept. 1721; will 24 June 1720-17 Sept. 1721, pr. 3 Mar. 1722.1
PC 1676-9, 1686-9.2
Chap. to Charles II 1666-85, to James II, 1685-8; dep. clerk of the closet 1668;3 clerk of the closet 1669-85;4 dean chapel royal 1685-89.
Sub-rect. Lincoln Coll., Oxf. 1659-61, 1663-8, rect. 1668-72;5 mbr. I. Temple 1674; master, high court of chancery bef. 1668; commr. eccles. affairs 1686,6 1687,7 for building 50 new churches.8
Rect. Gedney, Lincs. 1668-71,9 Witney, Oxon 1671-4;10 dean and precentor Chichester 1669-71.
Ld. lt. Durham 1674-90, 1712-14.11
Associated with: Steane, Northants.; 16-17 Great Piazza, Covent Garden, London (1680); 43 King Street, Covent Garden, London (1681-c.1688); Newbold Verdon, Leics. 1681-d.
Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, 1698, Bodleian Lib., Oxf.; oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, after 1698, National Trust, Kedleston Hall; oil on canvas, three-quarter length in peer’s robes, Lincoln Coll., Oxf.
Nathaniel Crew was the only bishop in this period who was also a peer. Indeed, he is thought to have been the first holder of both a peerage and a bishopric.12 A younger son, he had not been expected to inherit the barony and made an alternative career through the Church. He proved to be a thorough courtier, and during his own lifetime was decried for his willingness to toe the court line even where this interfered with his expected loyalty to the Church. Such malleability, apparent in his early life, became the hallmark of his career. Baptized into the Church of England, he accommodated himself to the interregnum as a presbyterian before emerging again in the 1660s as an ardent Anglican conformist. Elevated to the episcopate at the age of just 37, Crew owed his early promotion in the church to contacts at Oxford and to influential connections at court. During the 1670s he was identified as one of the ‘12 disciples’ of James, duke of York. Under James II he was at first sympathetic to the king’s desire to grant greater freedom to Catholics but when it was plain that the regime was unravelling, he became a stern critic of the policy. He survived the Revolution and by the reign of Anne was counted among the Tories on the bishops’ bench. Crew’s marked political quiescence attracted considerable opprobrium to the extent that his later charitable bequests were written off by some as bribes to posterity.13
The bishopric of Durham, one of the wealthiest in the country, brought Crew considerable wealth. Though reduced over the Interregnum, it was still thought in 1660 to be worth nearly £4,000 a year gross, though the abolition of feudal tenures was said to have had some impact on it. In 1707 Elizabeth Burnet estimated the see to be worth some £5,000 per annum; other uninformed estimates went as far as £6,000. These may have been overestimates, as there were also considerable costs associated with the see. Certainly, however, its value was steadily enhanced by the commercial benefits of a fast developing coal industry across the diocese.14 The deaths of his elder brothers meant Crew also inherited additional family property, though it had been diminished by the 2nd Baron Crew’s decision to convey a large part of his estate to his daughters, a settlement which Crew later contested.15 Crew’s fortune was augmented still further by his second marriage to the young co-heir to the vast Bamburgh estates, though this ultimately proved a troublesome inheritance. Crew expended over £20,000 buying back lands that had been sold to satisfy debts and it was not until 1709 that he eventually took full possession by buying out his nephew by marriage, Thomas Forster‡.16 Towards the end of his life, without direct heirs of his own, Crew was able to promise a substantial benefaction to Lincoln College, Oxford.17 Acquisitive and proud, Crew’s meteoric rise attracted envy. He was loathed by many of his contemporaries and earned the particular enmity of Henry Compton, later bishop of London. Although from similar backgrounds (they had even shared the same wet-nurse) the two men were diametrically opposed. They were also bitter rivals to several preferments long before locking horns over James II’s ecclesiastical commission.18 After Crew’s death it transpired that he had deprived the rector of Steane, where his seat was, of his glebe and tithes.19
Crew’s ecclesiastical career has been examined at length but with the exception of his open letter to James II in November 1688 calling for a free Parliament, he left no publications of his own.20 He claimed to be eager to avoid works being attributed to him with the result that none of his sermons made it into print. Accident also played its part. According to the memoir of Crew apparently compiled by Dr John Smith, one of the prebends of Durham, when he fled to Holland in 1689 he gave his personal papers to Samuel Eyre (a prebend of Durham). Eyre in turn entrusted them to his tailor but the papers were then lost when bailiffs seized the tailor’s goods for debt.21
Early career and elevation to Oxford
Crew’s father had been a prominent member of the Long Parliament, one of the Presbyterian leadership involved in bringing about the Restoration in 1660. As a reward he was elevated to the peerage. Nathaniel Crew was by then an Oxford fellow: quick to respond to the changing state of affairs he was, so he claimed, the first to adopt the surplice and hood in Lincoln College chapel, before any orders had been issued commanding their use. By 1663, he had come to the attention of the king and was said to have been offered a knighthood, though this was declined, on the grounds that he intended to enter the Church. Nevertheless he put off his ordination for a further two years, until 1665. A year later he was appointed a chaplain in ordinary and by the age of 30 he had become a ‘thorough courtier’.22 Samuel Pepys‡, who dined with them in November 1666 thought the Crew family ‘best ... in the world for goodness and sobriety’ and by 1667 judged that Crew delivered sermons of surprising maturity for his years.23 Crew himself attributed his popularity at court to his ‘good breeding’; as a result the king ‘would often use him with familiarity & freedom of conversation which he well knew how to receive in the manner that became him’. In early 1668 Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, was appointed dean of the chapel royal and Walter Blandford, bishop of Oxford, clerk of the closet. Crew was appointed Blandford’s deputy. In late 1668 he became rector of Lincoln College, but in 1669, following Croft’s resignation as dean of the chapel royal, Blandford moved to succeed Croft, and Crew succeeded Blandford as clerk of the closet. Croft’s resignation, related by Crew himself to Croft’s open criticism of the king’s behaviour towards his mistresses, was seen by some as deliberately engineered in Crew’s favour: Crew was said to have been intended to marry Croft’s recently deceased daughter. The same year, apparently on Blandford’s recommendation, Crew was appointed dean of Chichester. Crew’s preaching was appreciated by the court as well as by Pepys: his 1668 Lent sermon was considered to be of such quality that the king remained standing throughout, and was praised by the duke of York, to whom Crew seems to have become close.24
There were rumours of Crew’s imminent elevation to the episcopate at least two years before his eventual promotion to the bishopric of Oxford. In October 1669, only a few months after his appointment as dean, a newsletter reported erroneously that he had been made bishop of Chichester.25 The following year, his good standing at court was underlined when he was permitted to accompany an embassy to France. His eventual appointment to the see of Oxford appears once again to have owed something to Blandford, as it was closely bound up with Blandford’s own translation to Worcester. Crew considered James Butler, duke of Ormond [I], to have been behind Blandford’s promotion, though he reported the comment of Joseph Henshaw, bishop of Peterborough, that Crew had himself arranged Blandford’s move so that he could succeed at Oxford. He was consecrated at Lambeth on 2 July 1671 and celebrated with a well-attended banquet. The guests included his brother-in-law Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich, and the event was described by Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, as the most fine in his experience (according to Crew). According to Smith’s memoir his decision to retain the rectorship of Lincoln prompted a complaint from John Fell, later bishop of Oxford. Crew replied that as there was no suitable residence for the bishop he saw nowhere fitter for him to be but in the centre of his diocese. Even so, he resigned the rectorship the following year.26
Within six months of his elevation, Crew had presided at the controversial marriage of Charles Fitzroy, duke of Southampton, to Sir Henry Wood’s daughter. Both parties were underage: according to Sir Ralph Verney‡, their combined ages only amounted to about 16. Crew conducted his primary visitation in September 1672. He finally received his writ of summons on 23 October, a few days after he resigned the rectorship.27 On the 30th, a prorogation day, with only Sheldon, Humphrey Henchman, bishop of London, John Dolben, bishop of Rochester, and John Wilkins, bishop of Chester, present on the bishops’ bench, Crew took his seat in the Lords. For a man later decried for being servile, Crew was reputed to have been notably outspoken in his early career in the House. A prominent defender of York’s interests, he was said to have attracted attention for his forceful attacks on a number of prominent ministers whom he deemed inimical to the duke. He was also supposed to have been reproved by his father for reflecting too harshly on The Civil War period.28 Crew’s parliamentary career lasted for 43 years. Of the 41 sessions that assembled between 1672 and 1715, he attended all but three, and until 1689 he was nearly always in his place at the opening and closing of each session. At times of particular political tension (such as the autumn of 1673, the first exclusion Parliament and the only session of James II’s Parliament), he attended every sitting. Up to the 1688 Revolution he was appointed to the sessional committees in every session (examining the Journal on numerous occasions) and was named to select committees in all but one session. After 1689, he was appointed to over 200 select committees, but it is not certain whether he served on any of them.
In advance of the spring 1673 session of Parliament, Crew received the proxy of former Presbyterian Edward Reynolds, bishop of Norwich. He held the proxy throughout the session and assured colleagues that he would use it to ensure that Reynolds voted ‘right’.29 In the House on 4 Feb. for the start of his first session, Crew attended thereafter for nearly 94 per cent of sittings. He was named to the three sessional committees and to 14 select committees (including the committee on attorneys, to which he was added), nine of them on private bills. On 22 Mar. he was present at the afternoon sitting when the committee of the whole House debated the ultimately abortive bill for the ease of protestant Dissenters. A list of the sub-committee appointed to frame a clause allowing the king to suspend the penal laws by royal proclamation named Crew as a member.30 Smith’s memoir of Crew suggests that he had been ‘taken notice [of] for speaking well in the House of Lords’ against three peers who were particularly seen as hostile to York: George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury and Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby.31 Attending on 20 Oct. for the prorogation, Crew was back at the House a week later for the start of the brief autumn session on 27 October.
Crew’s association with York continued to develop during this period and by the close of 1673 he was closely identified with the duke. According to Smith’s memoir of Crew, at Easter 1672 Crew had spoken to York about his absence from the royal chapel but had managed to do so without sacrificing the duke’s good opinion of him.32 In the autumn of 1673 Crew was selected to officiate at York’s marriage to Mary of Modena. With the Commons eager to voice their opposition to the match, Crew was advised by Shaftesbury to obtain a marriage licence under the broad seal (Crew thought this was maliciously intended, as he planned not to grant it), but ultimately he conducted the Anglican rite at Dover, where the princess had landed on 21 Nov., under a royal warrant.33 He returned to the House for the opening of the new session on 7 Jan. 1674, attended just over 80 per cent of sittings and was named to four select committees. On 10 Jan. he received Blandford’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session), possibly in anticipation of the bill to secure the protestant religion and provide for the education of children in Catholic families. Crew was in the House when all legislation was lost with the abrupt prorogation on 24 February.
Translation to Durham
As early as March 1674 it was rumoured that the bishopric of Durham, vacant since January 1672, was at last to be disposed of. Crew, it was thought, ‘stands fair for it’. He appears to have approached York about being translated there some time before. Croft seems again to have used his interest on Crew’s behalf to secure the place.34 Unsurprisingly, competition for the prestigious see was fierce. George Morley, bishop of Winchester, and Gilbert Sheldon had previously pressed the case of John Dolben.35 Henry Compton also had designs on the ‘prince-bishopric’. It was reported that Compton waited on York ‘and run violently against [Crew] and his family’ but York dismissed him, advising that Durham would be filled not with a new bishop but an existing one.36 There was still some delay: Crew wrote himself that Crofts had to urge the king to take action in it. Although one newsletter reported that Crew had kissed hands for the bishopric in mid-August, a correspondent of Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, declared it ‘for certain’ only a few days later that Crew was to be translated to Salisbury. The latter was mistaken (probably prompted by the report that Durham had first been offered to Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury): Crew was elected at Durham on 26 Aug. (although the date is recorded as the 18th in Smith’s memoir). As well as being possibly the second choice for the see, Crew’s appointment was far from straightforward since many wanted the vacancy to remain unfilled until the palatine authority had been dismantled. As a further complication, revenues from the bishopric had been appropriated by the king for payments to the royal household including to James Scott, duke of Monmouth, and Nell Gwynn, to whom, it was rumoured, Crew subsequently paid £6,000 as compensation. On 28 Oct. he was confirmed as bishop of Durham at Covent Garden Church. He then ‘kept a most noble dinner at his house in Leicester Fields’ attended by ‘most of the principal persons about the court’. His enthronement took place by proxy the following month.37
Translation improved Crew’s financial standing dramatically and also offered him additional opportunities to assist family members. His nephews Charles Montagu‡ and Sidney Wortley Montagu‡ would benefit from mining leases on preferential terms from Crew. Crew also profited from the grant of coal transportation rights across his property and over the time of his episcopate would initiate unprecedented claims for mines under enclosed grounds in his copyhold manors.38 During the recess he had also been named as lord lieutenant of Durham and begun to use his extensive temporal powers in the county palatine, bolstered by honours conferred by custom along with the bishopric: lord lieutenant of the county palatine, admiral of Sunderland and earl of Sadberge.39 Though considerably reduced in its powers since the early sixteenth century, the county palatine possessed courts largely distinct from and independent of Westminster, with jurisdiction across Durham and Northumberland, as well as manorial rights over various outlying areas, including the manors of Crayke, close to York, and Northallerton, a parliamentary constituency, also in Yorkshire.40 The bill establishing parliamentary representation for Durham, long resisted by its bishops, had received the royal assent in March 1673, during the vacancy of the see. Crew made up for any erosion of authority by wielding considerable influence over the choice of parliamentary candidates.41
Crew evidently came under pressure over the lucrative appointments available in the cathedral of Durham: it was apparently with the agreement of Crew that on 19 Dec. 1674, at the instance of John Granville, earl of Bath, the king promised the deanery of Durham at the next vacancy to Bath’s brother, Archdeacon Denis Granville (the vacancy would not occur until 1684, on Dean Sudbury’s death). Crew was evidently a friend of the Granvilles, for he solemnized the marriage in March 1675 between Lady Grace Granville and George Carteret, Baron Carteret, when both were underage. Crew’s had to defend his rights of appointment to various posts, particularly prebends, a right established in the bishop since the reign of Queen Mary, but recently exercised by the king during the vacancy. In January 1675 the king attempted to make effective a promise during the vacancy made to Thomas Cartwright, later bishop of Chester, of the deanery of Ripon; Crew seems to have deftly avoided it. Crew was said in April to be intending to confer Durham prebends on the son of Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, and another on the brother of his own nephew, Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Sandwich (the latter was successful, but the young Annesley seems not to have secured the hoped-for place); but Cartwright was said to have secured the king’s recommendation ‘for the first of five of the best livings that shall fall in the bishop’s gift’.42 In the course of 1676-7 Crew again had to defend his right of appointment to prebends.43
Crew sat in the House of Lords as bishop of Durham for the first time on 10 Nov. 1674, a prorogation day. In January 1675 he was one of the signatories to the ‘bishops’ advice’ to the king on the suppression of Catholicism.44 On 8 Apr. in advance of the next parliamentary session he received Blandford’s proxy, possibly in anticipation of debates on Danby’s non-resisting Test. He took his seat on the opening day (13 Apr.), attended 92 per cent of sittings and was named to eight select committees, five on private bills. He attended until the prorogation on 9 June. In the second week of July he was expected in the country.45 Thereafter Crew would reside frequently at Durham, where he entertained with lavish hospitality, lived grandly and flamboyantly (with a gondola on the river) and refurbished the fabric of the castle. His reception at his first entry into Durham was, according to Smith’s memoir, ‘exceeding pompous and magnificent’ with ‘two coaches and six, 12 led horses and a great number of running footmen and servants on horseback’.46
By 13 Oct. 1675 he was back at Westminster for the start of the new parliamentary session. He attended two-thirds of all sittings and was named to eight select committees. On 18 Oct., perhaps surprisingly given their usually poor relations, he registered his proxy in favour of Compton, his successor at Oxford. It was vacated with Crew’s attendance on 8 November. On 10 Nov. he was named as one of the conference managers on the address to the king for recalling soldiers and he continued to attend until the prorogation later in the month. Meanwhile, a by-election had taken place for the county of Durham on 25 October. Crew backed Christopher Vane, later Baron Barnard, brother of the former member, but also someone who shared Crew’s Presbyterian antecedents.47
Crew undertook his primary visitation of the see of Durham in the summer of 1676, ‘which was very solemn and pompous’: he preached at Newcastle, and was met by the clergy at Alnwick, received by the corporation and the garrison at Berwick (some of the alderman asking to be excused from attending the Church because they were ‘of different principles from the Church of England’. He also conducted a visitation of the cathedral, apparently to the chagrin of the dean.48 He made the zealous Tory Anglican, Sir Richard Lloyd‡, chancellor of his diocese and enrolled himself and his secretary in the Durham mercers’ guild enabling them to vote in elections in the city.49 The same year he was appointed to the Privy Council, for which he thanked York.50 After the controversial recess of 15 months, Crew was back at the House on 15 Feb. 1677 for the start of the new session. He attended nearly 88 per cent of sittings during which he was named to 63 select committees, 25 on public bills and 38 on private legislation. On 14 Apr. Crew was named as one of the additional managers of the free conference with the Commons on the supply bill. On 23 Apr. he officiated at the baptism of Charles Mohun, future 4th Baron Mohun, Anglesey’s grandson.51
That summer, Crew joined with John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale [S], and ‘other persons of quality’ in defence of the postmaster at Doncaster, whom Sir John Reresby‡ hoped to eject from his office and replace with one of his own circle. Despite their backing the postmaster was put out after Reresby secured York’s backing for his own man.52 Despite this minor setback, Crew remained prominent within York’s grouping, indicated by his selection to baptize York’s latest son, Charles, duke of Cambridge, on 8 November, and perhaps in the (albeit inaccurate) report made by Roger Morrice that four days previously Crew rather than Compton had officiated at the marriage of Princess Mary to William of Orange.53 During Archbishop Sheldon’s long decline, and on his death in November 1677, Crew’s influence with York was thought to make him a strong contender to be his successor. Danby was well known to be keen to prefer Compton to the post, though conscious of York’s hostility to Compton and his zeal against Catholics. Smith’s memoir relates that as well as York’s support he was encouraged to put himself forward by his kinsman Ralph Montagu, who would later become duke of Montagu, and who was back from his Paris embassy in November and December 1677 (Montagu was not yet at least openly intriguing against Danby, however). Compton himself offered Richard Sterne, archbishop of York, as an alternative, clearly hoping that the elderly Sterne might be a stopgap until he was able to prevail. Crew’s father, who had previously encouraged his son to solicit for Durham, was now said to be opposed to his son’s translation. Ultimately William Sancroft, then dean of St Paul’s, was selected instead.54
Crew took his place in the House when it resumed on 15 Jan. 1678, although it then adjourned for almost two weeks. On 29 Jan. he dissented from the resolution to address the king for the release of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, who had been imprisoned on a charge of blasphemy. He attended until the close on 13 May and was then once more in his place at the opening of the following session on 23 May. On 13 July he was one of those named to report the conference with the Commons on methods and proceedings in Parliament. Two days later he attended for the prorogation and returned to Durham. Four months earlier, in March, the first election had been held for the Durham City constituency although the act providing for its enfranchisement had been passed five years earlier. Crew had originally recommended Wentworth Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon [I], ‘yet the people do utterly dislike him, and have desired the bishop to name another, and they express a kindness for ... Parkhurst’. John Parkhurst‡, Crew’s cousin, had been appointed by the bishop in 1674 as steward of his estates and on 27 Mar. he was, with Crew’s backing, successfully elected with Sir Ralph Cole‡, 2nd bt.55
Crew was back in London by the end of September when he was present at the council meeting held on the afternoon of 28 Sept. to hear the testimony of Titus Oates relating to the Popish plot.56 He then took his seat at the opening of the new session on 21 Oct. and attended for nearly 92 per cent of sittings. He was named to five select committees. He was not present on 7 Nov. when the bill to disable Catholics from sitting in Parliament was debated in committee of the whole House. He was registered as present on the 9th when there was further debate in committee, but one source reported that Crew had by then left the chamber.57 By the 21st, it was reported that Crew, together with Sancroft, Dolben and Peter Gunning, of Ely, were among the ‘chief opposers’ of the Test.58 According to the Memoirs, Crew made a point of cautioning the king of the attempt being made to divide Charles and York, ‘for who can be supposed to be so entirely your majesty’s friend as your own brother’?59
On 6 Dec., as part of the enquiry into the Popish Plot, the House considered the case of John Jennison, father of the Jesuit Thomas Jennison, a prisoner in Newgate. Crew was ordered to summon the elder Jennison to London and informed the House on the 19th of his arrival; the Lords subsequently permitted Jennison free access to his son and ordered Crew to examine Mr Smith, one of the Jennisons’ relations (and a convert from Catholicism) to ascertain the veracity of Smith’s conversion. Smith’s memoir of Crew tells a story about Crew asking Titus Oates, when he was dining at the chaplains’ table, Crew being there as clerk of the closet, who was supposed to replace him as bishop of Durham if the Plot had been successful; Oates’s answer—providing a name—was supposed to have protected Crew from any subsequent imputation of having been involved in the Plot himself.60 On 26 Dec. in the division on the supply bill (to disband the army) Crew appears to be listed as an opponent of the Lords’ amendment removing the provision that money raised should not be paid into the exchequer, but into the chamber of London, though this is surprising, particularly given that York, and other government figures, voted on the opposite side. He was present for the prorogation on 30 December. Following the dissolution in January 1679 he returned to Durham for the election campaign. The Durham City election on 20 Feb. saw the re-election of Sir Ralph Cole together with court candidate William Tempest‡. Parkhurst, a supporter of exclusion, seems as early as May 1678 to have redirected his attention to Northamptonshire where he was returned instead. In the borough of Northallerton, it was reported that ‘my lord of Durham ... hath recommended his elder brother [Thomas Crew‡] with some earnestness, and a kind of little threatening’, but Sir Gilbert Gerard‡, bt. and Sir Henry Calverley‡ were elected.61
On 3 Mar. Crew witnessed the affidavit in which the king denied that he had been involved in a previous marriage.62 Three days later he attended the House for the week-long abortive session of the first Exclusion Parliament. He attended every sitting and was named to just one select committee, to receive information regarding the Plot. On the 15th, after the brief recess, he was again present for the start of the next session. He attended nearly 97 per cent of its sittings and was named to 10 select committees. According to the Memoirs he supported Danby’s impeachment on the grounds that the disgraced lord treasurer had set himself against York. On 14 Apr. he left the chamber to avoid voting in the division on Danby’s committal to the Tower. The Memoirs stated that two other bishops ‘his friends’ followed him out, thereby denying Danby votes that might have saved him.63 On 24 Apr. he was named to the conference concerning the answers to the articles of impeachment and on 6 May was present for the debate on the bishops’ right to vote in capital cases. Four days later Crew voted to appoint a joint committee of both houses to consider the method of proceeding against the five impeached lords and, with Edward Rainbowe, bishop of Carlisle, was one of 51 to dissent from the Lords’ rejection of establishing that committee. Crew and Rainbowe had voted in opposition to the other 14 bishops present that day.64
By the spring of 1679 Crew’s position at court appears to have been weakening, no doubt on account of his close identification with York. In April he was omitted from the remodelled privy council. It was also rumoured that he was one of five bishops to be impeached for complicity in the Plot (the others being Peter Gunning, Peter Mews, bishop of Bath and Wells, John Pritchett, bishop of Gloucester, and Isaac Barrow, bishop of St Asaph), though no impeachments were forthcoming.65 Crew returned to Durham over the summer to mobilize the local militia in response to the rising in Scotland, and entertained Monmouth on his return from suppressing the Covenanters. According to Crew’s Memoirs, it was his absence from court during this period, and the influence of Lauderdale (who spread rumours that Crew had been ineffective in making preparations to resist the Scots), that had undermined his position at court.66 If his interest at court was in decline, it seems not to have had much impact in Durham. Following the dissolution in July, the election for County Durham on 25 Aug. resulted in another contested poll with Crew intervening on behalf of the successful candidates William Bowes‡ and Thomas Fetherstonhalgh‡. At the Durham City election on 10 Sept. Crew brought in his diocesan chancellor Sir Richard Lloyd.67
On 20 Oct. Crew responded to Sancroft’s urging to ‘hasten up’ to London with an undertaking to make preparations ‘for a sudden journey’. Although a further prorogation was anticipated, he reckoned that travelling then would be preferable to delaying to January. His plans changed on 7 Nov. when, after spending five days travelling south, he turned back when he heard that York was travelling by land to Scotland. He returned in time to entertain the duke and duchess and was seen being kissed by York, a mark of particular favour. Sir Ralph Verney was unsurprised that Crew afforded York such a welcome in Durham, ‘because he made that bishop’.68 In December, Crew’s father died, succeeded by Thomas Crew, 2nd Baron Crew, who had voted for exclusion as a Member of the Commons earlier that year.
Parliament did not, in the end, meet again for until the following autumn. Crew was back in the House on 21 Oct. 1680 for the opening of the second Exclusion Parliament. He attended 83 per cent of sittings and was named to four select committees. On the matter of exclusion Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, was said to have claimed that Crew was so lacking in principle that he would have voted for the measure if the vote had been close. Crew, though, opposed the bill and summarily dismissed his cousin Parkhurst from his employment after the latter spoke against York in the Commons. On 15 Nov. he voted to reject the exclusion bill on its first reading and on the 23rd he voted against the appointment of a committee of both houses to examine the state of the kingdom. On 7 Dec. Crew and his brother were in rare agreement in both voting William Howard, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason.69 Crew was asked by Sancroft to preach before the king on 22 Dec. at the fast for the prevention of all Catholic plots. After some hesitation, Crew agreed whilst claiming that he was ‘very unfit for such an undertaking’. He eventually submitted to ‘that which I must count a task, having never engaged before on the like subject. My inclinations have always been averse to appear in public, especially before so great a presence on such a solemn sudden occasion’.70
On 7 Jan. 1681 Crew and his brother were in the House for the division on the committal for high treason of Lord Chief Justice Sir William Scroggs, the two men again on opposite sides of the political divide.71 Crew attended until the prorogation on 10 January. Parliament was dissolved eight days later and in the subsequent general election Archdeacon Denis Granville (almost certainly on Crew’s instructions) instructed his congregation to vote for the sitting Members for County Durham. Crew was again appointed to preach at court on 20 March. The following day he attended for the start of the new Parliament in Oxford and attended on each of its seven sitting days. He was named to one select committee. Following the peremptory dissolution of Parliament on 28 Mar. Crew signed the Durham grand jury’s address approving the king’s actions and thanking him for his protection of the Church; neither of Crew’s political opponents, the Whigs Sir Gilbert Gerard and John Parkhurst, signed the address. Secretary of State Sir Leoline Jenkins‡ promised to forward to the king both of the Durham addresses, the other from the lieutenancy, also subscribed by Crew.72
In 1681 Crew succeeded to the estates of his brother, John, at Newbold, Leicestershire, valued at between £500 and £600 a year. The following year he stood godparent (with Anglesey and Lady Gifford) to the son of Lady Temple and preached the Lenten sermon on 5 March.73 Following the revelations of the Rye House Plot in June 1683 he was ordered to search for conspirators in the area around Doncaster. He instructed the justices to find sureties for the good behaviour of suspects, including the servants of Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke. Secretary Jenkins applauded Crew’s ‘diligence’ after the Darlington bailiff sent Crew 20 Scottish suspects. Another loyal address from the Durham grand jury was forwarded to London by Crew on 13 July followed swiftly by an inventory of all arms seized in the county.74
Crew’s activities in hunting potential conspirators coincided with his summer visitation.75 Towards the end of July 1683 he was also preoccupied by rumours of the anticipated elevation of Thomas Cartwright, later bishop of Chester, to the see of St Davids. Crew wrote to Sancroft hoping that Cartwright would not be permitted to hold his Durham prebend in commendam, arguing that too many absentees were prejudicial to the functioning of the cathedral chapter. Cartwright’s expected promotion seems to have encouraged Thomas Comber to seek the anticipated vacant prebend through application to Sancroft. He claimed always to have sought a place at Durham but to have been opposed by the bishop. He now hoped that with the support of Bishop Compton and the earl of Halifax, he might have greater success. In the event Cartwright remained where he was for another three years, thus thwarting an opportunity for Compton to insert one of his protégés in Durham against Crew’s opposition.76 Anticipating another general election in the autumn of 1683, Crew received instructions from Jenkins on behalf of William Bowes and Sir Richard Lloyd, ‘two worthy friends of mine [who] have had your countenance and protection on such occasions and, I hope, will still deserve it’. The elections did not take place and neither man stood at the subsequent election. A sign of the recovery of Crew’s interest at court during the last years of the reign of Charles II was the report that he had been offered the archbishopric of York, vacant since Sterne’s death in June. If he was offered the distinction, he declined it.77 In the spring of 1684, Crew and his fellow lieutenants were informed that the king had no intention of summoning Parliament and that any attempt to petition for one must be discouraged.78 Crew proved a willing instrument of Tory reaction, pre-empting the king by surrendering the Durham charter before it was demanded under a quo warranto. Narcissus Luttrell‡ lamented the bishop’s enhanced power under the new charter, whereby he ‘reserved to himself and his successors in that see the power of approving and confirming the mayor, recorder, aldermen and common council of the city.’79
The Accession of James II
Crew, as clerk of the closet, was in regular attendance on Charles II during the last days of his life.80 As a partisan of York’s he flourished once James had succeeded to the throne. He became one of the king’s chief advisers on religious affairs. In April he advised Dean Granville to see to the restoration of weekly communion in Durham Cathedral, gratifying Granville, for whom this seems to have been a pet project; the change was confirmed in the visitation of the cathedral in September, though the leaking one of Granville’s letters in which he had complained at Crew (and other bishops) for being too slow to enforce some of the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer, may have been intended to make trouble between the two of them.81 In the parliamentary elections for James II’s first Parliament, two Tories were returned for County Durham without opposition. Crew’s candidate, his spiritual chancellor Sir Richard Lloyd, was returned for one of the city seats together with his nephew Charles Montagu‡. (He appointed Montagu, a younger son of the first earl of Sandwich, as constable of Durham Castle in 1684, vice-admiral in 1685, and, on Lloyd’s death, spiritual chancellor of the diocese in 1687, writing to Sancroft in 1686 insisting that he should have as his next chancellor ‘a person who will be directed and governed by me’.82)
On 23 Apr. Crew attended the king at his coronation as one of his supporters under the canopy of state.83 He took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May and attended every sitting of that session. He was named to 14 select committees (including the committee on minors’ marriages, to which he was added on 2 June). On 26 June he reported from the committee on the bill involving St Anne’s Church, Westminster. Parliament was adjourned over the summer. According to Smith’s memoir, the bishop’s earlier entertainment of Monmouth was said to have offered some of his detractors the opportunity to question his loyalties at the time of the rebellion, and to have been behind the decision to appoint Sir John Fenwick‡, 3rd bt. to take command of the Durham county militia as well as the Northumberland forces (nominally under the control of Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle). More probably, Fenwick as an experienced soldier was thought a more appropriate commander. The king told Crew that Fenwick had informed him that the Durham militia was ‘the most regular and best disciplined of any in the kingdom’. With the rebellion crushed and immediate danger averted, the militia was returned to Crew’s command. He was ordered to remain watchful for further signs of sedition, particularly amongst nonconformist ministers.84
Present for the prorogation on 20 Nov., Crew attended the House for four further prorogations between 10 May 1686 and 28 Apr. 1687. In late 1685 he was credited with helping to procure the see of Bristol for Jonathan Trelawny, later bishop of Winchester.85 During 1686 relations between Crew and Compton degenerated further following Crew’s replacement of Compton as dean of the chapel royal.86 It was rumoured that Crew failed to supply the chapel with protestant preachers: instead, the sergeant of the vestry, Thomas Haynes, ‘voluntarily… applied himself to and engaged several doctors of the Church of England to take turns there’.87 He was increasingly an object of ridicule as the willing tool of the king’s plans for the advancement of catholicism. He was even viewed as vulnerable to conversion himself. Gilbert Dolben‡ noted that he bore ‘his preferment with so much moderation that his chin is not smoother than his deportment’ and continued:
’Tis the sweetest man, the meekest person, so full of courtesy and empty of sense, that either his good nature or his ignorance must needs make way for his perversion. And truly I cannot blame it in a man who is willing to please and scarce knows the difference between one religion and another.88
It did nothing for his reputation that in July 1686 he was appointed to the ecclesiastical commission. The extent of his participation has been questioned, but in the absence of Sancroft he was the senior cleric in attendance.89 Arriving in London on 30 July, Crew sat throughout the proceedings against Compton in August and September, which resulted in the suspension of his old rival from office.90 He subsequently administered the diocese of London with Thomas Sprat, of Rochester, and Thomas White, of Peterborough; Sprat claimed that he and White, but not Crew, had Compton’s blessing.91 It was widely believed that he and his fellow commissioners exercised authority arbitrarily (according to the king’s wishes) and in contravention of canon law. Crew also exhibited a pedantic edge in the way he carried out his duties. He appears to have taken the lead at the controversial degradation of the disgraced cleric, Samuel Johnson, in November, seeing to the ritual removal of all the symbols of Johnson’s clergy status bar his cassock (though the memoir of Crew claims that he arranged for payments of a total of £500 to be made to Johnson out of his own revenues, two years before the Revolution). On another occasion, Crew was reported to have taken offence at Sancroft’s failure to append his signature to one letter sent in to the commissioners, putting ‘the letter up with some resentment and indignation’.92
Crew’s perceived association with James’s Catholic favourites was hinted at in November 1686, when he was observed prompting William Powis, earl of Powis, Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, and Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover, at a ceremony at which they were made commissioners of the peace. The following year, when the ecclesiastical commission was renewed, Crew remained on the board while Sancroft was dropped. With the suspension of the archbishop predicted on a daily basis, Crew’s translation to Canterbury seemed equally probable.93 Thomas Lamplugh, bishop of Exeter (later archbishop of York), believed that Crew ‘aims at great things’ and hoped that Sancroft would hold fast. Notwithstanding his compliance in ecclesiastical affairs, Crew seems not to have been wholly tractable. Although he appears to have been on good terms with Thomas Cartwright (dining frequently with him at least after he became bishop), he claimed that that he attempted once again to block Cartwright’s elevation to the episcopate but was outmanoeuvred by the king’s Jesuit counsellor Father Edward Petre.94
At the start of 1687, Crew was listed as one of the lords who would support a repeal of the Test Act. Roger Morrice observed that the repeal of the Tests had ‘gained the concurrence of several temporal lords, and ... of seven bishops’, of whom Crew was one, and under February reported an interview between Crew and Robert Byerley‡ on the subject, in which Crew argued that the repeal was necessary to secure toleration for Catholics in the event of a Protestant successor to the throne, ‘that those laws may not be turned upon them who have been such loyal persons’. Crew went on that ‘the king was a most just and gracious and merciful prince, and did desire nothing more, but that all his subjects might stand upon an equal level and we might all live in peace and perfect ease ... and it was very fit that those laws should be taken off’.95 During April 1687, Crew, Sprat, White, Cartwright and Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, were instructed by the lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, to arrange for a congratulatory address to the king for his Declaration of Indulgence. A meeting of ‘several’ bishops composed the address, but the attempts of Crew, Parker and Cartwright to persuade the London clergy to sign it resulted in them being dubbed ‘renegadoes to the Church of England, and Tories’. Further attempts during May to make the address more acceptable to the Church failed. When Crew finally presented it to the king, James complained that it was too tardy and displayed a selfish disregard for any who were not Anglicans.96 Crew’s court duties now involved attendance at some Catholic ceremonies. He was present at the consecration in May 1687 of the papal nuncio, Ferdinando d’Adda as archbishop of Amasia, and also joined the formal procession through Windsor in July when the nuncio was received at court. Crew denied he had ever met the nuncio in person but it failed to scotch rumours that he had converted to Rome. Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, branded Crew the ‘weak, vain man of Durham’. Crew, aware of his vulnerability, increasingly avoided private discussions with those not known to him.97
The Revolution, 1687-90
By November 1687 Crew was still thought to be in favour of a repeal of the Test Act, but (for all the rumours of his sympathies with Rome) he was increasingly isolated and unhappy about the king’s ecclesiastical policy. After Father Petre had been sworn in at the Privy Council on 11 Nov. 1687 (placed between Crew and Sir Nicholas Butler) Crew ceased to attend its meetings, prompting the king to accuse him of desertion. Crew was nevertheless said to have continued to rebuke the more vehement anti-Catholic preachers, including Simon Patrick, later bishop of Ely, whom he refused to introduce to the king.98 With the announcement of the queen’s pregnancy, Crew helped to compose an order of thanksgiving for use on 15 Jan. 1688. Due to preach the Ash Wednesday sermon at court on 29 Feb., Crew was instead, however, instructed to go to Durham. He left London on the 23rd ‘in order to understand how the people in his palatinate may be inclined to favour his m[ajesty’s] intentions’.99 Back in his diocese, Crew was said to have continued to canvass opinion on repeal of the tests in Durham and accepted without protest a purge of the commission of the peace in March.100 In the ‘three questions’ posed to the clergy by the bishop in May (almost certainly composed not by Crew but by Dean Granville) it was suggested that since the Church of England predated the penal laws, it would be better to dispense with those laws rather than antagonize the king, an act that could lead ultimately to the destruction of the Church. The secular version of the ‘three questions’ was rejected by six of the Durham justices.101 In March, the corporation of Durham had signalled their willingness ‘to engage and give our own votes and to use all our interest with others for such persons only as shall be recommended by the lord bishop of Durham to serve as burgesses for this city in the next ensuing Parliament’. During May he was asked by the king to supply the names of suitable parliamentary candidates, but by September he had been instructed by the king to recommend Sir Gilbert Gerard as the candidate for the county.102
Crew was one of only a few bishops who was said to have tried, unsuccessfully, to enforce the reading of the second Declaration of Indulgence, issued at the end of April with orders for it to be read in churches outside London on the first two Sundays in June. According to one newsletter, he stripped a number of vintners and victuallers of their licences for refusing to subscribe a paper supporting the policy. Although it was claimed in several newsletter reports in July, Crew’s biographer denied the claim that he had suspended a number of clergy at his visitation for their refusal to read the indulgence read, explaining the suspension of Dr Morton as relating to his non-appearance (a version of events that receives some support from a correspondent of Thomas Hearne nearly fifty years later), and retold a story about a local Catholic, Sir Thomas Haggerson, hearing that Crew had not ‘taken care’ to have the king’s orders obeyed. Crew did hosted lavish celebrations following the birth on 10 June of the Prince of Wales and preached a loyal sermon, the corporation of Durham sending up an address welcoming the news of the royal birth.103 Crew was excluded from all discussions relating to the protest of the Seven Bishops. Though it was said in early June that the ecclesiastical commissioners were keen for the business to be dealt with by king’s bench and not themselves, Crew, in Dutham cannot have had much input into the discussions. Following the dissolution of the commission in early October, however, Crew was instructed to travel to London after authorizing the guarding of all coastlines and the removal inland of livestock capable of transport.104
By the time of the invasion in November 1688 Crew was in London.105 He had already been granted a pardon as insurance against future repercussions for his actions (a pardon which held up legally after the Revolution, despite the efforts of Gilbert Burnet, later bishop of Salisbury, to call it into question).106 At the start of November he joined a group of bishops who attended the king to reassure him that they had not invited the prince of Orange, Crew insisting that he was ‘the last man in England that shall be guilty of that’. By this point, though, Crew appears to have begun to shift his position. It was reported that, although shunned by many of his fellow bishops, he now changed sides and had ‘gone off from [the] bishop of Chester [Cartwright] and St Davids [Thomas Watson, who was intensely disliked by his colleagues], and has made his submission to the archbishop and is fallen in with him and his brethren’. Sometime before 10 Nov., when Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon was startled to find him at Lambeth, he had assured the archbishop that he was ‘perfectly come into [their] sentiments’.107 As a result he was viewed with some suspicion at court, but he retained sufficient interest to be able to secure private audiences with the king. On 14 Nov. he took the opportunity of presenting a letter of advice, pressing James to withdraw his protection from Catholic chapels, to call a free Parliament, and advising on clerical appointments. He also refused (once again) the offer of the archbishopric of York, which he counselled should be ‘filled with some other more deserving person’. Anthony Wood viewed Crew’s change of tack as ‘abominable falseness’.108
On 5 Dec. the city of Durham surrendered to a detachment commanded by Richard Lumley, Viscount Lumley [I], later earl of Scarbrough, who took up quarters at Crew’s palace.109 One week later both Crew and his brother Thomas attended the council chamber at Whitehall to sign the various declarations to preserve the peace. Crew attended meetings on 12 and 14 Dec. and was named in the summons to attend William at St James’s on the 21st. Sources disagree as to whether he attended that day; confusion with his brother Lord Crew may explain any discrepancy in the records. He was, though, present on 22 and 25 Dec. when he signed the address to William to take on the provisional government. On 26 Dec. he was one of the bishops summoned by Sancroft to discuss ‘certain limits and restrictions to be laid upon the prince in this Convention, which if he concur not to they will labour to give him checkmate’. Asked that night about the Lambeth proceedings probably by Sir John Baber (who had been physician to King Charles II), Crew remained tight-lipped despite the two having been former confidants. It may be that he had little to tell; Baber’s response assumed that Crew was still distrusted and kept at arm’s length by the other bishops.110
Dismissed from his positions at court, Crew nevertheless appeared at Westminster on 25 Jan. 1689, the fourth day of the Convention. He would attend only 12 sittings (six per cent) in the first session of the Convention, voting in favour of a regency on 29 January. On 4 Feb. it was reported that Crew (not noted as being present in the Journal) and Thomas Belasyse, Viscount (later earl of) Fauconberg, ‘retired between the hanging and the door next to the bishops’ room’ during the main division on the abdication question. By the 6th Crew appears to have resolved to abandon James and was one of only two bishops, according to some lists, to vote that the king had abdicated and that the throne was vacant, the other being Compton. In other lists Crew was the only bishop to do so. Clarendon remarked bitterly that Crew, who had been to the House only twice before that session ‘came today to give his vote against the king, who had raised him’. Anthony Wood accused Crew of deserting the king ‘in hopes to keep his bishopric’.111 Crew’s kinsman, Montagu (soon to be promoted to an earldom), claimed afterwards that he had invested considerable effort persuading Crew, Huntington and Jacob Astley, 3rd Baron Astley, to vote against a regency.112 Crew himself seems to have later forgotten whether or not he was in the House for the critical vote.113
The Reign of William and Mary
On 18 Feb. Crew attended the House for the last time for eight months. He was one of three bishops named by Gilbert Burnet as being untrustworthy; being careful to ensure that he had a witness to any conversation, it was no doubt out of concern for his security under the new regime that he resolved to depart for the continent with his nephew James Montagu, one of the sons of the earl of Sandwich.114 According to one newsletter, Crew resigned his bishopric before his departure. It was also reported that he had intended to make for France but that the ship was diverted by a storm, during which he abandoned his disguise and distributed the sacrament among the passengers in anticipation of imminent wreck. Compton and Burnet were said to have been eager to succeed him in his apparently vacant see of Durham.115 Crew, it was claimed, was dissuaded from stepping down by his Montagu relatives and resolved to retain the place rather than see it taken on by Compton. During his absence (noted at a call of the House on 22 May) he was replaced as clerk of the closet by John Tillotson, later archbishop of Canterbury. But after five months in the Netherlands, Crew returned to London. According to Narcissus Luttrell‡ he arrived in time to take the oaths on 25 July. Other accounts suggested that he returned to the capital with just two days to spare, attending at the Guildhall on 30 July as the House was by then adjourned (according to Crew, at Burnet’s prompting).116 A bitter letter from his former colleague, Dean Granville, was published from Rouen, dated 1 July, presumably after Granville was aware of Crew’s decision to return home, criticized Crew’s failure to maintain his loyalty to James II.117
During July the Commons had ordered that Crew be excepted from the bill of Indemnity. The Crew memoirs attributed his inclusion to Danby, now marquess of Carmarthen, as an act of revenge.118 Crew’s exception was opposed in the Commons by Sir William Pulteney‡ and the bill did not pass Parliament that session.119 Tillotson (who owed his original royal chaplaincy to Crew’s influence) introduced Crew to the queen, who granted him the right to continue as bishop of Durham. He lost the lord lieutenancy which was given instead to Scarbrough (as Lumley had since become), though the claim that the crown managed to prise away the right to appoint to the cathedral prebends appears to be inaccurate.120 Carmarthen in fact put Crew among the supporters of the court in a list he compiled between October 1689 and February 1690, and added that he was to be spoken to by Lady Montagu.
On 19 Oct. 1689 Crew attended the Lords and, with Simon Patrick, took the oaths.121 Four days later he attended the start of the next session and attended nearly half of all sittings. Early in the session the palatine jurisdiction came under attack: on 25 Nov. the House ordered an investigation into ‘irregularities in the courts of the counties palatine’. The enquiries came to nothing and the palatinate survived until the 19th century.122 On 23 Jan. 1690 Crew and Nicholas Stratford, of Chester, were the only bishops to oppose the bill for restoring corporations. Crew’s opposition was perhaps unsurprising given his role in the surrender of the Durham charter.123 Crew attended for the prorogation on 27 January. The elections that followed the dissolution of Parliament showed that he had retained considerable influence within the city of Durham (not least because the bishopric owned two of the city’s three manors). On 3 and 10 Mar. both the city and county saw the unchallenged return of Tory candidates.124
Crew attended the House on 20 Mar. 1690 for the start of the new Parliament and attended the session for 48 per cent of sittings. Rather than being cowed by his near escape at the Revolution, Crew seems to have resumed an active role in the House. On 5 May, with Bishop Watson of St Davids, he visited Clarendon, ‘rejoicing at the victory they had received … the peers having passed a vote that no oath nor subscription should be imposed upon peers, whereby they should lose their seats in Parliament in case of refusal’.125 Yet he was far from being out of the woods: a Privy Council meeting in May determined that Crew should be excepted from a new bill of general pardon.126 On 20 May the bill was read, debated and passed without opposition, with Crew one of the 35 people excepted from pardon. During the debate, Crew threw himself on the mercy of the House, saying, as recorded in the Memoir:
My lords … I am very far from envying the happiness of those who are thus pardoned: nay, rather I heartily congratulate them upon it, for God forbid that when the king’s eye is good mine should be evil. I remember when an act of this kind was sent down to this House in [Lord] Treasurer Clifford’s time ... in that Act there was no exception of persons, only crimes were excepted. If the same form had been observed in this, I humbly conceive there would have been more room for justice: I am sure there would have been less reasons for so long a debate as this. My lords, I am very far from going about to justify my own conduct: nay rather I am heartily sorry for it, and beg pardon of heaven, pardon of all your lordships, and more particularly I ask this reverend prelate’s pardon (laying his hand on the bishop of London’s [Compton’s] shoulder) …No, my lords, I resolve for the future, to make the laws the standard of my actions, according to the royal example … My lords: seeing that this pardon is so necessary for preserving the public peace of this nation, and that you may see how much I am a well-wisher to the good of my own country, rather than I should give any further delay to the passing of it, I will throw myself up for a sacrifice, and am willing the bill should pass.127
According to his memoirist, Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, later observed that Crew ‘spoke like an angel’ and Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, commending ‘the most natural piece of oratory’ he had ever heard. Even Roger Morrice reported the speech as being ‘very well-tempered ... confessing his faults and miscarriages, submitting himself entirely to the wisdom of the nation’. Crew escaped further formal censure.128 He attended until the penultimate day of the session, which was adjourned on 23 May. He was back at Westminster for the autumn session on 20 Oct. and thereafter attended 66 per cent of sittings up to the adjournment on 5 Jan. 1691.
Crew remained in London during the recess, attending the House between 31 Mar. and 30 June 1691 on four days for prorogations. There was still speculation that he would be threatened with prosecution ‘to be frightened into a resignation to make way for the preferment of [the bishops of] London and Worcester’.129 Once more nothing came of this and he resumed his seat in the House on 22 Oct. for the start of the next session of which he attended 57 per cent of sittings. On 17 Nov. it was noted by one observer that Crew was part of a parliamentary deputation to the queen, who was apparently surprised by his inclusion.130 His name, unsurprisingly, cropped up when William Fuller gave testimony before the Commons on the Preston Plot.131
In January 1692 it had been falsely rumoured that the 57-year-old bishop was to be married to his distant relation Anne, daughter of John Crew of Crewe Hall and widow of John Offley. At the end of the year he did marry after a number of unsuccessful courtships in the course of the previous 20 years.132 Crew’s new wife, a widow, some 40 years old, was reported as having ‘no great advantages of person or fortune’. Retaining her title of Lady Tynte until the bishop succeeded to the barony, and she exercised a vigorous pastoral ministry amongst the poor and sick at Durham. Within months of the marriage, the bishop was said to have fallen ‘into a very languishing distemper’. Thomas Watson queried whether marriage did not suit him.133
Crew attended the House sporadically until 23 Feb. 1692, the day before an adjournment. By August political tensions ensured that he was under constant surveillance. A report in May had suggested that he was one of a number of prominent figures who had been sent for to be taken into custody. Carmarthen was sent intelligence by the ‘strenuous revolutioner’ dean of Durham, Thomas Comber (who had replaced the nonjuring dean Granville) that sedition was rife in the bishopric and that Crew was responsible for packing juries and for undermining royal justice.134 Again, Crew seems to have escaped further investigation.
On 4 Nov. he attended the House for the start of the 1692-3 parliamentary session and attended 66 per cent of sittings. On 3 Jan. 1693 he voted on the other side to his brother on the passage of the place bill. On 9 Mar. Crew was given leave to be absent from the House that day. He returned on the 10th and attended until the prorogation on the 14th. He had returned to Westminster within two weeks of the start of the November 1693 session, attending thereafter for 68 per cent of sittings. On 17 Feb. 1694 he voted to reverse chancery’s dismission in the cause Montagu v. Bath, a case in which he was related to participants on both sides. Present for the prorogation on 25 Apr. he almost certainly returned to Durham during the recess. He was back in the Lords a fortnight after the start of the 1694-5 session in November. He attended 47 per cent of sittings. Following the death of Queen Mary, to whom he owed his survival at the Revolution, Crew attended her funeral in Westminster Abbey.135 He continued to attend the House until 24 Apr. 1695.
Parliament was dissolved on 11 October. Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, predicted accurately that Crew would back his nephew Charles Montagu and Sir Henry Liddell for the Durham city seats although both candidates were Whigs. In the Northallerton election, Carmarthen pressed Crew and John Sharp, archbishop of York, to agree on a replacement candidate for the Dissenter Thomas Lascelles‡; either they refused or made an unsuccessful attempt as Lascelles was returned unopposed.136
Crew took his seat in the House on 23 Nov. 1695, the second day of the new Parliament, attending the session for 76 per cent of sittings. He joined his fellow bishops on 10 Apr. 1696 in signing the ‘repugnance’ at the absolution by two non-jurors of Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend‡, the conspirators in the Assassination Plot.137 On 25 Apr. he was named as one of the managers of the conference for the Greenland trade bill. Present for the prorogation on 27 Apr. he returned to Durham, probably staying there until November, when he resumed his seat four weeks after the start of the autumn 1696 session. He attended 62 per cent of sittings. He attended regularly throughout the passage of the Fenwick attainder bill in December and sat up on the final night of the trial until 3 o’clock in the morning.138 He twice dissented from Lords’ resolutions, including the resolution to give the bill a second reading and on the 23rd voted against the passage of the attainder. He was then one of those to register a protest on the grounds of legal technicalities and the fact that Fenwick was too ‘inconsiderable’ to warrant such proceedings.
Succession to the peerage
In November 1697, on the death of his older brother, Crew succeeded to the barony of Crew. Although the fifth son of the 1st baron, none of Crew’s older brothers had produced heirs, and he had been regarded as the heir to the barony for some time. The death of his younger brother, Waldegrave, in the summer of 1694 also made more likely the title’s extinction after Crew’s own death. He inherited the Northamptonshire patrimony (and electoral influence in the tiny corporation of Brackley), but in 1700 contested in chancery his brother’s financial arrangements that had placed several of the manors in trust for the latter’s daughters. Crew arrived at Westminster on 14 Dec. 1697, 11 days after the start of the new session, and attended for only 20 per cent of sittings. On the 15th he received his writ of summons as 3rd Baron Crew of Stene. He took his seat on the barons’ bench two days later, ‘not being in his bishop’s habit’.139 He thereafter always received two writs to each Parliament, one as bishop and the other as baron. His unique position also meant that he was free to register proxies with either peers or bishops. Crew did not attend the House that session after 19 May 1698, registering his proxy in favour of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester. At the election following the dissolution on 7 July, one of the Durham city seats went to the Tory candidate Thomas Conyers (whom Crew later entertained in London). Crew continued to back his nephew Montagu, who took the first seat comfortably, but Liddell was beaten into third place by Conyers, the result of ‘ill management’ and poor support from Montagu and his managers—perhaps including the bishop who may have been happy to support the Whiggish Montagu as a family member, but less keen on the Whig Liddell rather than the Tory Conyers.140
After his succession to the barony, Crew resided far less in his diocese and attended the House on fewer occasions, now dividing his time between his four residences, Steane, Newbold Verdon, Auckland and Durham.141 After a series of prorogations, the new Parliament eventually opened on 6 December. Crew took his seat one week later, attending the session for 38 per cent of sittings during which he was named to several committees. On 22 Dec. he was named to the committee for the bill for Edward Radclyffe, 2nd earl of Derwentwater, and on 12 Jan. 1699 to that for Nicholas Lepell’s naturalization bill. On 25 Jan. he was named to the committee for George Penn’s bill and on 10 Feb. to that considering the bill for relieving the creditors of Sir Robert Vyner. During the remainder of the session he was named to the committees for three more naturalization bills and on 7 Mar. he was named to the committee tasked with inspecting the Journals about trials in criminal cases. He did not attend the session after 10 Mar. (the day following the death of his first wife), thus missing the passage of the bill to confirm a settlement on trustees of lands in Durham and Northumberland by Sir William Forster. The Forsters of Bamburgh, with whom Crew had long associations, were in severe financial difficulty; Crew married the young Dorothy Forster (his original choice of wife who was now old enough to marry but still 40 years his junior) almost as soon as her father had died and was declared bankrupt. Their ceremonial progress into Durham was a matter of considerable interest.142
Crew missed the entirety of the 1699-1700 parliamentary session, and it was not until 6 Feb. 1701, the opening day of the new Parliament, that he once again took his place in the House, after which he was present for 58 per cent of sittings. His relations with his old adversaries had not improved. When in March 1701 the countess of Anglesey petitioned the House for a bill of separation, Crew supported the bill and was attacked by Burnet for lending encouragement to ‘whores’. According to Crew’s biographer, Burnet was forced to apologize.143 On 20 Mar. Crew was one of 21 lords, including Compton and Sprat, to register a protest against the failure of the Tory attempt to send to the Commons an address relating to the Partition Treaty. He attended the session until 4 June, missing the last three weeks of business, and was back in Durham by September.144 Parliament was dissolved two weeks later. In the elections of December 1701 Charles Montagu was again returned for Durham City, but with Sir Henry Belasyse‡ who had recently changed his political affiliations to the Tories.145 The same month it was reported that Crew had secured an additional windfall following the suicide of Charles Granville, 2nd earl of Bath. Cary Gardiner lamented that the bishop’s ‘revenues increase upon so sad an account, and when I see the strange prosperity of some men, makes me wonder. And he is one of them’.146 Crew did not attend the new Parliament until three months into the session, attending for only 30 per cent of sittings. Crew greeted the news of the king’s death in March 1702 with the sentiment that William had been king for altogether too long. He asserted, and won, his traditional right as bishop of Durham to escort the new queen to her coronation, but was unsuccessful in regaining his lord lieutenancy for another ten years.147 On 22 May Crew reported from the committee on church building and the augmentation of livings in Ireland out of the profits of forfeited estates. He attended until the prorogation on 25 May and returned to Durham, but by September was journeying back to the capital with his wife to transact business on the sale of some of her Northumberland property.148 He missed the initial three weeks of Anne’s first Parliament, but attended thereafter for 69 per cent of sittings.
The reign of Anne
Crew became one of the more prominent Tory bishops under the more congenial circumstances brought by the new reign. On 3 Dec. 1702 Crew joined Compton and Sharp to vote against the wrecking amendment to the occasional conformity bill proposed by John Somers, Baron Somers. The following day Crew again joined with Archbishop Sharp and Bishop Compton and other Tory bishops to oppose an amendment proposed in committee of the whole House requiring office holders to take the sacrament four times a year and to attend church every week. On the 9th, once more with Sharp and Compton, Crew opposed the motion that the tack was unparliamentary. On the 17th, with the Commons demanding a conference on occasional conformity, the Lords divided on an adjournment; Crew voted with the minority for the delay. Correctly forecast by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as a supporter of the occasional conformity bill, Crew continued to vote with the Tories in the new year, opposing the clause relating to the Corporation Act on 16 Jan. 1703. On the 19th, he voted with the Tories in favour of post office and excise grants to the royal dukes, sons of Charles II, and on 22 Jan. he protested against the resolution to dismiss the petition of Robert Squire and John Thompson in their appeal against Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton.149
Following the prorogation on 27 Feb. Crew absented himself from the House for the following year. In November, he was forecast by Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, as a supporter of the next attempt to legislate against occasional conformity. Missing the first ten weeks of business in the 1703-4 session, Crew attended for only 29 per cent of sittings, missing the division of 14 Dec. when the occasional conformity bill was again thrown out. He was nevertheless listed as having given his vote (presumably by proxy); proxy records do not, however, survive for this session. On 4 Jan. 1704 the House ordered that Crew be contacted about his continuing absence and he was ordered to attend at 11 in the morning on 12 January. He did not appear until 21 Feb., shortly before he was due to preach the Lenten sermon at court. His sermon met with approval from Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, Francis Newport, earl of Bradford, and the queen herself.150 Back in the House a flurry of dissents followed. On 16 Mar. he twice dissented from the resolution to agree with the committee of the whole House and replace Robert Byerley‡ (a Durham-based Tory Member of the Commons) on the list of commissioners to examine public accounts. Five days later he dissented from the resolution to reject a rider in the bill to raise recruits for the army and marines and protested against the passage of the bill. On the 25th he dissented from the decision to put the question whether the failure to pass censure on Robert Ferguson was an encouragement to enemies of the crown.
Crew attended for the prorogation on 3 Apr. 1704. By the beginning of May he was in Bath. 151 His name was included on a list of members of both Houses drawn up by Nottingham in 1704, which may indicate support over the ‘Scotch Plot’. He was noted as excused at a call of the House on 23 Nov. but returned to Westminster in time for the re-introduction of the occasional conformity bill in December, six weeks after the start of the new session. He subsequently attended the session for 43 per cent of sittings. Listed as a probable supporter of the tack, he was one of 11 bishops to vote in its favour. On 15 Dec. Crew voted for the second reading of the new occasional conformity bill. Two days later he entertained a range of ecclesiastical and political contacts and relations, including William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, Edward Montagu‡, styled Viscount Hinchingbrook, son of Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich, Edward Carteret‡ and Thomas Conyers.152 He remained in London over the Christmas period, attending the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. On 22 Jan. 1705, he protested against the Lords’ rejection of the deprived bishop Thomas Watson’s petition regarding a writ of error. Crew attended the House until 6 Mar. missing the last week of business. He returned to Durham where, on 23 Aug. he presided over a thanksgiving service for Marlborough’s action at Brabant.153
No longer regular in his attendance, Crew was missing from the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705. He was again noted as excused at a call of the House. He took his seat on 8 Jan. 1706 and was present at only 31 per cent of sittings over the 1705-6 session, having missed the ‘Church in danger’ debate on 6 Dec. 1705. This may have been a diplomatic absence given that he usually remained in London over the winter months. He was certainly in London by Christmas when he received the sacrament from William Wake, later archbishop of Canterbury. In the division on the regency bill of 31 Jan. 1706 both Crew and George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells, voted with the minority against Somers’ motion to replace the place clause in the 1701 Act of Settlement. On 11 Mar. he was named to both conferences on the matter of privilege of both Houses. Attending the House until 14 Mar. he returned to Durham for the summer, in July forwarding to Harley a loyal address from the grand jury of Durham. He again missed the start of the session that assembled in December 1706, taking his seat on 13 Jan. 1707 in time for debates on the union with Scotland and attending thereafter for 46 per cent of sittings. Crew for the most part supported the Union, but on two occasions joined with other Tory bishops to attempt to ameliorate aspects of the treaty that he thought damaging to the Church. On 3 Feb. he supported Sharp’s amendment that the Test Act be an integral part of the Union, registering his protest when the amendment was rejected. On the 15th, in a debate in committee of the whole House on the articles of Union, Crew, Sharp and Sprat deserted their Tory colleagues and voted for the Union.154 On 3 Mar., however, Crew and Sharp once again joined the Tory bishops in voting against the clause in the Union treaty that guaranteed the rights of the Kirk.155 Attending until the week before the prorogation in April, he failed to attend the brief session later that month. During the bishoprics’ crisis that summer, Crew’s advice was sought by Offspring Blackall, who would eventually become bishop of Exeter, as to the latter’s choice of diocese; Crew recommended Exeter although he made it clear to Sharp that he was ‘indifferent’ as to the remaining disposal of preferments.156
Crew arrived at the first Parliament of Great Britain (the final session of the 1705 Parliament) three weeks after the start of business (on 23 Oct. 1707) and attended 64 per cent of the session’s sittings. He attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth and in March 1708 was invited to take part in the procession headed by James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, to address the queen.157 Present for the prorogation on 1 Apr. he returned to Durham a month earlier than usual. The election campaign was already underway with the creation of 75 new freemen and vigorous canvassing by the sitting Members, Conyers and Belasyse, the clergy and Tory Anglican gentry. The emergence of a Whig candidate prompted Crew to redouble the efforts of the Tory campaign. The week before the election witnessed an intimidating sermon from the cathedral pulpit (by the school master) in which opponents of the Tory Conyers were threatened with eternal damnation. Crew was listed as a Tory in a publication of Lords’ political affiliations, but he did not intervene in all constituencies where he had an interest, leaving the borough of Brackley as an unchallenged win for the Whigs.158
He next attended the House four weeks after the opening of Parliament on 16 Nov. 1708, attending the session for 45 per cent of sittings. On 21 Jan. he voted against permitting Scots peers with British titles to vote in the elections for Scots representative peers. He resumed his normal Tory stance in the vote of 15 Mar. 1709 on the general naturalization bill, and was one of 10 Tory bishops to seek to retain the requirement that subjects attend their Anglican parish church and not an unspecified Protestant gathering.159 Crew almost certainly left London after the prorogation on 21 Apr. but returned to Westminster on 28 Nov. to resume his seat in the 1709-10 session. He attended for 49 per cent of sittings. On 1 Dec. with Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, he introduced Thomas Manningham, bishop of Chichester, to the Lords. Crew attended the House throughout the Sacheverell trial during February and March. A supporter of the high Tory firebrand, he dissented on 14 Mar. 1710 when a motion to adjourn the House was negative and protested against the decision that it was unnecessary to include in an impeachment the specific words deemed to be criminal. On the 16th, 17th and 18th he continued to oppose Lords’ resolutions, voting consistently with the Tories. On the 16th he voted against the resolution that the Commons had made good the first article.160 On 20 Mar. he voted Sacheverell not guilty and dissented from both the guilty verdict and the punishment.
The Harley Ministry and afterwards
Crew’s support for Sacheverell increased his own popularity in the diocese. He was met by 5,000 Sacheverell enthusiasts at Elvet Moor on his return home after the prorogation, possibly the same occasion referred to by Lady Clavering, who criticized her husband for taking part in the ‘cavalcade’.161 Shortly before the dissolution in September, it was rumoured, wrongly, that the 76-year-old bishop was dead. Instead he was gearing up for yet another parliamentary election campaign. Sir Henry Belasyse warned Harley that the region had become complacent about the safety of the Church, but a costly campaign, together with the creation of another 49 Tory freemen, guaranteed a Tory victory.162
Crew, reckoned by Harley a certain supporter of the new ministry, attended the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710 and attended the session for 53 per cent of sittings. He was one of only two bishops to avoid the annual St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. According to Crew’s nephew, the bishop was unwell.163 In February 1711, he joined a number of Tory peers in offering his support in his capacity as Baron Crew to Sir Thomas Cave‡ in the forthcoming Leicestershire by-election triggered by the succession of John Manners, styled marquess of Granby, as duke of Rutland. On 1 Mar. Crew joined with the rest of the bishops’ bench in supporting the appeal of James Greenshields.164 On 31 May he reported from the select committee on the bill to grant the queen ‘several duties upon coals’ for building 50 new churches in London and Westminster. It was reported that he was the only bishop left in attendance after Trimnell, Manningham and William Fleetwood, of St Asaph, left the chamber to show their disapproval of the bill which would be seen as an attack on Dissenters.165 Crew attended until the prorogation on 12 June. Listed as one of the Tory ‘patriots’ in the Lords of the previous Parliament, Crew nevertheless laid party considerations to one side in favour of family ones when in April 1711 he gave a wealthy living to his nephew, John Montagu (already Dean of Durham), despite being petitioned ‘by some great men’ in favour of Sacheverell. He also refused Sacheverell a prebend’s stall ‘for fear of disobliging the Whigs and because of his being under sentence’. He put Sacheverell off by insisting that he ought to be rewarded by the ministry rather than by a private patron.166
In the autumn of 1711, with the approach of a new parliamentary session and Oxford, as Harley had become, expecting struggles over the peace negotiations against strongly entrenched Whigs in the Lords, Crew’s support was of enhanced significance to the ministry. He avoided attending the start of the session, though, informing Oxford that his summons:
should oblige me to a ready obedience, if old age and the depth of winter would allow me trying the experiment of such a hasty journey ... my own heart ... is brim full of loyalty and fidelity to the queen, of unfeigned sincerity for the Church, and of a steady adhering to the constitution… though I cannot so suddenly give my personal attendance in Parliament, yet that I may not seem, in such a critical juncture, to decline a service I have hitherto espoused with a more than ordinary zeal, I will presume to appear by proxy at the time desired; in order to which I have here enclosed a temporal one, with a space in it, for your lordship, if you please, to insert the name of such a peer as you shall judge most proper. By this your lordship sees how great a confidence I have in your integrity for the public good.167
Crew’s proxy was duly registered in favour of John Poulett, Earl Poulett, and was very likely one of four lodged by Tory prelates used in favour of the adjournment vote on 2 Jan. 1712 after the introduction of the 12 new peers.168 It was vacated with Crew’s attendance on 14 Jan. after which the bishop attended for 47 per cent of sittings. On 26 Feb. he voted to agree with the Commons’ pro-episcopalian amendment to the Scottish toleration bill. Two months later he reported from committee of the whole House on the building churches bill, which related to an earlier act on the use of coal duties to build churches in London. In May he appears to have been the only one of the bishops then present to back the ministry by voting against the address to the queen to overturn the orders restraining James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, from engaging the French. Absent from the session after 16 June, he registered his proxy in favour of Samuel Masham, Baron Masham, on the 26th. Meanwhile, Crew and William Dawes, bishop of Chester, had given Nicolson their proxies for a diocesan meeting at Carlisle while they, according to Nicolson, were at Westminster ‘ratifying the safe and honourable peace’.169 At a by-election in Durham the previous month both Belasyse and James Nicolson declined to stand rather than ‘disoblige’ the bishop. Robert Shafto‡, who stood on the Church interest, won the seat despite allegations of bribery and false voting.170 Having recovered ground under the Tory ministry, Crew finally regained his coveted lieutenancy, writing in July that he noted that he had been present in court ‘and was an eye witness to all that signed it, which was so unanimous, that I easily discerned the good effect of her majesty’s gracious restoring me to my former post of honour’.171
Crew and his wife were expected at Lutterworth towards the end of November on their way to Steane. By February 1713 he was back in London and he attended the House on 9 Apr. for the first day of the new session. He attended one third of all sittings. On 15 May he reported from the select committee on the bill to create a parish from the Stockton chapelry in his own diocese. Listed by Oxford as a probable supporter of the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty, Crew attended the House for the last time that session on 15 June. He appears to have registered his proxy with William North, 6th Baron North, as North requested that Oxford would transfer the proxy when he also quit the session at the beginning of July.172
Despite the protection and warmth extended by friends such as John Sharp, Crew appears to have accepted his widespread lack of popularity in the establishment. When Crew and the duke of Leeds (the former earl of Danby and marquess of Carmarthen) met at court, their mutual attempts at civility did not disguise the fact that, as Crew acknowledged, Leeds had had his sights on Crew since the impeachment attempt in 1679.173
Despite reaching his 80th birthday the previous month, Crew returned to Westminster on the third day of the new Parliament, attending one third of sittings. He was present on 5 Apr. 1714 for the vote on the perceived danger to the Protestant succession and on the 13th when the Lords considered the queen’s reply on the danger posed by the pretender. Of the bishops then in the House, only Crew and Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, voted with the court.174 On 17 Apr. Crew again registered his proxy in favour of North (vacated on the 27th). Nottingham correctly estimated that Crew would support the schism bill; on 11 June in the division on extending the scope of the bill to Ireland Crew voted in favour of the clause.175 Three days later he again registered his proxy in favour of North for the remainder of the session; the proxy was used on 15 June in support of the schism bill.
The resignation of Oxford and the death of the queen spelled the end of Crew’s political revival. He was in Durham when the queen died, where he proclaimed the new king. He was thus absent for the entirety of the brief August session that met in the wake of the queen’s death. He travelled south shortly afterwards and attempted to wait on the new king. He was not admitted at court; he left the message that he came only to pay his duty but had nothing to ask of the new king. Once again he lost the lord lieutenancy. He attended the coronation on 20 October. The following day he finally waited on the king where they discussed Crew’s similar role in two previous coronations. With the earl of Wharton present, he also waited on the Prince and Princess of Wales that autumn, apparently with a favourable reception.176
Crew lived on for a further six years after the Hanoverian accession and continued to play a role in Parliament. He died at Steane on 18 Sept. 1721. According to one possibly apocryphal account, his dying words were ‘don’t you go over to them’, which the writer took to mean the Hanoverians. His lengthy will and codicil bequeathed his considerable estates in trust for charitable and educational uses and secured his name for posterity as a great benefactor.177 His patrimony of Steane devolved (under the 2nd Baron’s marriage settlement) on Jemima, wife of Henry Grey, duke of Kent.
B.A./R.D.E.E.- 1 TNA, PROB 11/584; Bodl. Add. C 303, ff. 208-23; C. Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe Bishop of Durham (1940), 332-58.
- 2 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’ ed. A. Clark (Camden Misc. ix), 15; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 103, 138.
- 3 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 8.
- 4 Add. 36916, f. 135; Bodl. Tanner 44, f. 102.
- 5 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crew, 11, 28; CCEd.
- 6 CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 202.
- 7 Ibid. 338.
- 8 The Commissions for building 50 new churches: The minute books, 1711-27 (1986), 34-37.
- 9 CCEd.
- 10 VCH Oxon. xiv. 135.
- 11 Durham UL (Palace Green), Mickleton and Spearman ms 23, f. 163; CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 398; CSP Dom. 1685, p. 43; Add. 70221, Crew to Oxford, 18 July 1712; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 289.
- 12 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 222.
- 13 Fordyce, History and Antiquities, i. 80.
- 14 Eg. 3331, f. 121; Add. 61458, ff. 71-3; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crew, 60.
- 15 Oxford DNB; TNA, C 6/318/54, PROB 11/442.
- 16 HP Commons 1690-1715, iii. 1093; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 242-43.
- 17 HMC Portland, vii. 226.
- 18 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 6, 7, 30-31, 44, 148-49.
- 19 Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake 22, f. 349.
- 20 An Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham (1790); Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe.
- 21 N. Crew, To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty: the most Humble and Faithful Advice of your Majesties ever Dutiful Subject and Servant the Bishop of Durham (1688); Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 237; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 26.
- 22 Whiting, Nathaniel, Lord Crew, 16; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 6-8.
- 23 Pepys Diary, vii. 355-56, viii. 145.
- 24 Keay, Magnificent Monarch, 157; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 9-10; Bodl. Tanner 44, ff. 101-2; Verney ms mic. M636/23, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 14 Apr. 1669.
- 25 Add. 36916, f. 149.
- 26 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 11, 12; Add. 36916, ff. 184, 224; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 33.
- 27 Verney ms mic. M636/24, Sir R. to E. Verney, 4 Jan. 1672; Oxf. Hist. Centre, DIOC/3/B/3, f. 112; PA, HL/PO/JO/19/1/71; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 12.
- 28 Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 33, 34; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 40.
- 29 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 14.
- 30 Bodl. Tanner 43, ff. 189-94.
- 31 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 14.
- 32 Ibid. 12; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 35-36.
- 33 Verney ms. mic. M636/26, Sir R. to E. Verney, 20 Nov. 1673; M636/27, Sir R. to E. Verney, 24 Nov. 1673; HMC Le Fleming, 106; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 13; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 38; Miller, James II, 74.
- 34 Bodl. ms film 293, Folger Lib. Newdigate mss, LC 32; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 14-15.
- 35 Bodl. Tanner 43, f. 27.
- 36 Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 34; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 14.
- 37 Bodl. ms film 293, Folger Lib. Newdigate mss, LC 72, 74, 99; HMC Hastings, ii. 165; Oxford DNB; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 41-43; Fordyce, History and Antiquities, i. 78; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15.
- 38 HP Commons 1690-1715, iv. 848, 897; HP Commons 1715-54, ii. 557; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 298-300.
- 39 CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 398.
- 40 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15; Durham UL (Palace Green), Mickleton and Spearman ms 23, f. 163; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 54-55; HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 737.
- 41 VCH Durham, iii. 41; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 226-8.
- 42 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 79-80; Bodl. Tanner 41, f. 20.
- 43 CSP Dom. 1673-5, pp. 472, 526; CSP Dom. 1676-7, p. 420; CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 61; Fasti 1541-1857, xi. 77-81; Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. to E. Verney, 18 Mar. 1675.
- 44 CSP Dom. 1673-5, pp. 548-51.
- 45 Bodl. Tanner 42, f. 165.
- 46 VCH Durham, iii. 41; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15.
- 47 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 226; iii. 622.
- 48 Bodl. Tanner 92. f. 19; Articles of Visitation and Enquiry…In the Primary Visitation of the Right Rev. Father in God Nathanael by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham (1676); ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 16.
- 49 HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 756; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 96.
- 50 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15.
- 51 Add. 18730, f. 21.
- 52 Reresby Mems. 118.
- 53 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 38; ‘Lake Diary’, (Camden Misc. i.), 6-7.
- 54 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 16-17; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iv. 381; Browning, Danby, i. 204.
- 55 Verney ms mic. M636/30, Sir R. to E. Verney, 1 Mar. 1677; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 227, iii. 208.
- 56 Kenyon, Popish Plot (2000), 77.
- 57 Verney ms mic. M636/32, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 18 Nov. 1678.
- 58 Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 210, f. 243.
- 59 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 15.
- 60 Ibid. 19.
- 61 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 480, iii. 208; Verney ms mic. M636/31, Sir R. to E. Verney, 30 May 1678.
- 62 Bodl. Carte 130, f. 291.
- 63 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 105; Add. 29572, f. 112; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 19.
- 64 Letters of the Honourable Algernon Sydney to the Honourable Henry Savile (1742), 61-4; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 105.
- 65 HMC Var. Coll. ii. 394; Wood, Life and Times, ii. 447.
- 66 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 17-18; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 96-100; Mems. of Mr William Veitch and George Brysson…with other Narratives illustrative of the History of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution (1825), 64; VCH Durham, iii. 41.
- 67 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 226; ii. 756.
- 68 Bodl. Tanner 38, f. 92; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 234-5; VCH Durham, iii. 41; Verney ms mic. M636/33, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 19 Nov. 1679; Sir R. to J. Verney, 1 Dec. 1679; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 18; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 107.
- 69 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 108, 317; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 253.
- 70 Bodl. Tanner 37, ff. 208-9.
- 71 Bodl. Carte 81, ff. 656-7; LJ, xiii. 736-9.
- 72 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 226; Bodl. Tanner 37, ff. 217-18; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 361.
- 73 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 19; Verney ms mic. M636/36, J. to E. Verney, 9 Feb. 1682; Bodl. Tanner 36, ff. 197-98.
- 74 CSP Dom. Jan.-June 1683, p. 352; CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 10, 67, 111, 136.
- 75 Articles of Visitation…In the Ordinary Visitation of the Right Rev. Father in God, Nathanael by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham (1683).
- 76 Bodl. Tanner 34, ff. 99, 105.
- 77 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 226; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 125-26.
- 78 CSP Dom. 1684-5, pp. 22-23.
- 79 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 129-30; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 227-8; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 314.
- 80 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 183; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 137.
- 81 Bodl. Tanner 31, f. 218; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 139.
- 82 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 227-28; Bodl. Tanner 30, f. 68.
- 83 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 207.
- 84 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 138-39; CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 180, 212-13, 252-3, 298; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 22-3.
- 85 Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 52-3.
- 86 Add. 72481, f. 95; HMC Portland, iii. 392; Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 52; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 77, 79.
- 87 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 164.
- 88 Add. 72481, f. 109.
- 89 Add. 72516, f. 35; CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 202, 209; Bodl. Tanner 30, f. 73, Tanner 460, f. 22.
- 90 Verney ms mic. M636/41, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 31 July 1686, 11 Aug. 1686; Bodl. Carte 113, ff. 14-33; HMC Verulam, 87-94; HMC 7th Rep. 503; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 247.
- 91 Bodl. Tanner 30, ff. 146, 177; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 260; Carpenter, Protestant bishop, 100.
- 92 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crew, 151-3; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 275-6, 302-5; Bodl. Tanner 30, ff. 121, 160, 169; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 22.
- 93 Morrice, Entring Bk. iii. 295, 333; CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 338.
- 94 Bodl. Tanner 30, f. 187; Cartwright, Diary, 3, 5, 44, 53, 56, 58, 62, 65, 84; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 150-1; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 21.
- 95 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 345-6, 364-5.
- 96 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 24, 31, 42, 49, 62-63, 78; Cartwright, Diary, 47-8; Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. to Sir R. Verney, 26 Apr. 1687, M636/42, Dr H. Paman to Sir R. Verney, 4 May 1687, M636/41, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 18 May 1687; HMC 7th Rep. 504; Bodl. Tanner 29, f. 13.
- 97 Wood, Life and Times, iii. 219; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 164, 165-66; Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 267 n.1; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 24; Bodl. Tanner 29, f. 34.
- 98 Add. 72516, ff. 56-7; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 168; Verney ms mic. M636/42, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 16 Nov. 1687; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 166-7.
- 99 HMC 5th Rep. 378; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 168-9, 172-4; Bodl. Tanner 29, f. 123; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 223; Add. 34510, f. 87.
- 100 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 175.
- 101 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 227; Eg. 3335, ff. 4-5; Bodl. Tanner 29, f. 23; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 257.
- 102 HP Commons 1660-90, i. 228; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 199; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 267.
- 103 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 274; HMC Le Fleming, 210; HMC Portland, iii. 409; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, ff. 144-5, 155, 160-61; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 22; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 176-78, 179; Bodl. Rawl. letters 22, f. 61.
- 104 Add. 34510, f. 123; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 334.
- 105 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 181.
- 106 Add. 61486, f. 162; Add. 34510, f. 164 ; HMC 12th Rep. pt. vi. 303-8; CSP Dom. 1867-9, p. 390; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 25; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 181, 190.
- 107 Bodl. Tanner 28, ff. 219-21; Clarendon corresp. ii. 199, 202, 494-5; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 183-84; Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 330, 331.
- 108 Durham UL, Mickleton and Spearman ms 46, f. 122; Add. 34510, f. 185; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 184-5; Wood, Life and times, iii. 285.
- 109 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 185-6; Eg. 3336, ff. 63-4.
- 110 Add. 22183, f. 139; Beddard, Kingdom without a King, 74, 98, 122, 124, 153, 165, 167; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 424, 425, 444, 445.
- 111 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 256, 261; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 188-89; Ailesbury Mems. i. 230; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 7; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 298.
- 112 CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 138; Dalrymple Mems. ii. app. ii. 340.
- 113 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 26.
- 114 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 190; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 26.
- 115 Bodl. Ballard 45, f. 52; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 300-1; Oxford DNB (Gilbert Burnet).
- 116 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 190-1, 192-3, 194; Oxford DNB (Gilbert Burnet); CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 68; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 26-27; Add. 70233, Sir E. to R. Harley, 1 Aug. 1689; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 284; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 563; Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 82-3.
- 117 D. Granville, ‘A Letter to his Bishop the Bishop of Durham’, in The Resigned and Resolved Christian (1689).
- 118 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 151; Hist. and Proceedings of the House of Commons, ii. 355-73; Examination of the Life and Character of Nathanael, Lord Crew, 84-5; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 204.
- 119 HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 304.
- 120 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 23; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 201-2, 204, 207-8, 320; Birch, Life of Tillotson, (1753), 137; G. Scott Thomson, ‘The Bishops of Durham and the Office of Lord Lieutenant’, EHR, xl. 374; CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 142, 177, 308.
- 121 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 197.
- 122 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 206.
- 123 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 384.
- 124 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 175, 176.
- 125 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 312.
- 126 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 444.
- 127 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 202-3; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 29-30.
- 128 ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 29; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 203, 204; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 447.
- 129 Add. 70015, f. 73.
- 130 HMC 7th Rep. 207; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 215.
- 131 Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 337-38; HMC Hastings, ii. 221-22.
- 132 Add. 70149, A. Pye to A. Harley, 7 Feb. 1691; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 554, 569; HMC 7th Rep. 487; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 215-16.
- 133 Glasgow UL, ms Hunter 73, lxi; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 216; HMC Hastings, ii. 226-27.
- 134 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 216-17; T. Comber, Mems. of the Life and Writings of Thomas Comber, DD (1799), 308-9, 335.
- 135 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 221.
- 136 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 176-77, iv. 590, 848, 850; A. Tindal Hart, Life of Sharp, 220.
- 137 Add. 70081, newsletter, 18 Apr. 1696; State Trials, xiii. 413.
- 138 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 221.
- 139 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 433; Oxford DNB (John, Baron Crew); TNA, C 6/318/54; PA, HL/PO/JO/19/2/1184; CSP Dom. 1697, p. 518.
- 140 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 177.
- 141 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 223.
- 142 Add. 72498, ff. 20-21; Oxford DNB; VCH Durham, iii. 42.
- 143 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 291; Timberland, ii. 20-21.
- 144 Cambs. RO, K17/C1.
- 145 HP Commons 1690-1715, iii. 166.
- 146 Verney ms mic. M636/51, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 11 Sept. 1701.
- 147 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 236.
- 148 Add. 72498, f. 69.
- 149 Nicolson, London Diaries, 139, 142, 179, 185.
- 150 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 237.
- 151 Add. 72539, ff. 182-83.
- 152 EHR, l, no. 199, 450; Nicolson, London Diaries, 255.
- 153 Nicolson, London Diaries, 260; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 238-39.
- 154 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 288; LPL, ms 1770, f. 9; Nicolson, London Diaries, 368, 394, 415; Add. 70221, Crew to R. Harley, 29 July 1706; LJ, xviii. 225; Timberland, ii. 167.
- 155 Nicolson, London Diaries, 422.
- 156 Hart, Life and Times of John Sharp, 242.
- 157 LPL, ms 1770, f. 54; Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake 17, f. 186.
- 158 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 176; EHR, lc no. 356 (1975), 520.
- 159 Nicolson, London Diaries, 486.
- 160 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 46, f. 182; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 244; Add. 72494, ff. 169-70.
- 161 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 245; Add. 70054, A. Clavering to Sir J. Clavering, 8 Aug. 1710.
- 162 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 47, f. 39; Add. 72495, ff. 21-22; HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 176.
- 163 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 288; Nicolson, London Diaries, 525.
- 164 Leics. RO, Braye mss 2845; Verney ms mic. M636/54, Sir T. Cave to Fermanagh, 11 Feb. 1711; NLS, Wodrow pprs. Wod. lett. Qu. V, f. 148.
- 165 Add. 72495, ff. 75-6.
- 166 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 47, ff. 193-4; Holmes, Sacheverell, 259; Add. 72495, ff. 60-61.
- 167 HMC Portland, v. 121.
- 168 Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 175-6.
- 169 Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake 17, f. 327.
- 170 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 178.
- 171 Add. 70221, Crew to Oxford, 18 July 1712.
- 172 Verney ms mic. M636/55, M. Lovett to Fermanagh, 23 Nov. 1712; Add. 72500, f. 137; 70283, North and Grey to Oxford, 3 July 1713.
- 173 Hart, Life and Times of John Sharp, 296; ‘Mems. of Nathaniel Lord Crewe’, 33.
- 174 Cobbett, Parl. Hist. vi. 1343; Sykes, ‘Queen Anne and the Episcopate’, EHR, l. 463-64.
- 175 Nicolson, London Diaries, 612; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 289.
- 176 Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 289-91; Oxford DNB; LPL, MS 3016, ff. 16-17.
- 177 Monod, Jacobitism and the English people, 1688-1788, 151; TNA, PROB 11/584; Whiting, Nathaniel Lord Crewe, 322-31.