John Crewe (bap. 1772 – 4 December 1835) was an English soldier and peer.
He was the son of John Crewe, 1st Baron Crewe, a politician who was created the first Baron Crewe in 1806, and Frances Anne Crewe, the daughter of Fulke Greville, who was a political hostess known for her great beauty.[1][2] He was described by Frances Burney in the early 1790s as "a silent and reserved, but, I think, sensible young man".[3] His younger sister, Elizabeth Emma (1780–1850), married Foster Cunliffe-Offley; two other siblings, Richard and Frances, did not survive infancy.[2]
As a child in around 1775, he was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in a pose and costume which mimic the well-known portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger.[4] The portrait is considered among the artist's finest portrayals of children,[5] and has been described as "one of Reynolds' freshest attempts at comedy painting".[6] Horace Walpole commented: "Is not there humour and satire in Sir Joshua's reducing Holbein's swaggering and colossal haughtiness of Henry VIII to the boyish jollity of Master Crewe?"[7]
Crewe entered the army, and rose to the rank of Major-General in 1808, Lieutenant-General in 1813 and full General in 1830, before retiring in 1831. He lost the sight in one eye during active service.[8][9][10] In 1793, then a lieutenant, he was a member of the Macartney Embassy to China, led by Lord Macartney.[9][11]
In 1807, he married Henrietta Maria Anna Walker-Hungerford, daughter of George Walker of Studleighhouse, near Calne in Wiltshire.[9] They had four children, three daughters, Henrietta Mary, Maria Hungerford (who died in infancy) and Annabella Hungerford, and a son, Hungerford.[8] His wife died in 1820.[8][9] According to one source, he contracted a second bigamous marriage in 1820.[12] His daughter Annabella Hungerford married Richard Monckton Milnes in 1851.[9][13]
Crewe lived abroad for many years, latterly at the chateau Bois-l'-eveque, near Liège in Belgium.[9] In 1817, he was imprisoned in France after being falsely accused of owing 23,945 francs to a hotel-keeper. The Times quotes the French newspaper The Moniteur:
The most extraordinary feature in this case ... is, that General Crewe preferred to remain for five months and a half in prison, and to sacrifice in the expenses of suit a sum much larger than the pretended debt, rather than pay to Brunet a sum which he did not owe. This ... is one of those causes which may serve to fix our opinion as to the English character.[14]
On his father's death in 1829, he became the second Baron Crewe.[1] According to one source, his father cut him out of his will, so that most of the Crewe family's large estate in Cheshire, including the Jacobean mansion of Crewe Hall, were inherited by his sister, Elizabeth Cunliffe-Offley.[15] He never subsequently lived at the hall.[9]
Lord Crewe died at Bois-l'-eveque, Liège, in 1835, and is buried at Barthomley. He was succeeded by his son, Hungerford Crewe.[9][16]