Rev. Willoughby Crewe

Clergyman, son and one of the heirs of Richard Crewe who claimed the compensation for the enslaved people on Raymond's in Vere. One-third of the compensation went to trustees (Abel Smith and Earl of Stanhope, q.v.) of John Frederick Crewe, the other two-thirds went to the Liverpool merchant Joseph Brooks Yates (q.v.).

1. Son of Richard Crewe of Richmond, Surrey. Matriculated Christ Church Oxford 1810 aged 17; B.C.L St Alban Hall 1819, rector of Muckleston (or Muxton) Salop [sic: in fact it is also a Staffordshire parish] and Astbury, Cheshire 1836.

2. Will of Rev. Willoughby Crewe of Muxton Staffordshire proved 14/06/1850. He was also a trustee of Elizabeth Osborn nee Allpress (q.v.), who described him as her nephew.

3. A letter from Sarah Harriet Burnley, governess of Willoughby's nephews at Crewe Hall from 1822, gives a contemporary description of him in 1827: “He is now a clergyman, amply preferred – idle as Creole blood can make him (his Mother was a West Indian dawdling beauty) doing no manner of useful thing, but luckily, abstaining from vice. His living is not more than seven miles from hence, and he may in fact be said to live here. He is a widower, with two charming little boys, now at school with a Lady (they are very young) in Wales. His wife died after I came here, and certainly her loss has contributed to make him more reckless, and nonchalant than before. She was a lovely creature, and I believe he was as much attached to her as his nature will permit him to be to any body.”

4. His father Richard Crewe petitioned the House of Lords to divorce his mother Milbourough Allpress in 1802.

1. Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]

2. PROB 11/2114/206.

3. Lorna J. Clark (ed.), The letters of Sarah Harriet Burnley (Athens, Georgia, USA, University of Georgia Press, 1997) pp. xlviii, 273.

4. Journals of the House of Lords Vol. 43 p. 442.