John Carew (regicide)

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For other persons named John Carew, see John Carew (disambiguation).

John Carew (1622-1660) was one of the regicides of King Charles I.

Carew was educated at Oxford and the Inner Temple. In February 1647, he was elected Member of Parliament for Tregony, Cornwall, and the following year was one of the parliamentary commissioners sent to receive the King at Holdenby House. In January 1649, Carew was involved in the preparations for the King's trial. He was appointed to the High Court of Justice, and was a signatory of the King's death warrant. Carew was a close friend of Thomas Harrison and shared his Fifth Monarchist beliefs that the overthrow of Charles I was a divine sign of the second coming of Jesus and the establishment of the millennium of a thousand years of Christ's rule on earth.

During the Commonwealth (1649-53), Carew served on various parliamentary committees. He was a member of the Council of State from 1651-3. He had a particular interest in legal and social reform, and was involved in the administration of the navy during the First Anglo-Dutch War. He represented Devon, Cornwall in the Barebones Parliament in 1653. Like other radicals, Carew opposed Cromwell's elevation to the office of Lord Protector. He published an attack on the Protectorate in The Grand Catastrophe, published in 1654, and was rumoured to be involved in plots against the government. In February 1655, Carew demanded the release of the imprisoned Fifth Monarchist preachers Christopher Feake and John Rogers. He was arrested after refusing to answer a summons to appear before Cromwell and remained in prison from mid-February 1655 until October 1656. After his release, Carew declined to join any further conspiracies against the government. He represented a branch of the Fifth Monarchist movement that sought an alliance with Baptists at a conference at Dorchester in 1658.

Carew made no attempt to escape at the Restoration, and was brought to trial as a regicide in October 1660. His attempts to justify the righteousness of the trial and execution of King Charles resulted in the death sentence being passed upon him. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on 15 October 1660.

See List of regicides of Charles I