[5] Elected MP for Tregony in 1647, Carew also belonged to the Fifth Monarchists, a Protestant millenarianist group who viewed the execution of Charles I in January 1649 as paving the way for the second coming of Christ.

[8] He found the same usage from the Court as Major-General Harrison had done, being frequently interrupted and council denied, though earnestly desired by him in that point of law touching the authority by which he had acted.

Upon which the Lords and Commons declared ...Here the Court being conscious that their cobweb-coverings were not sufficient to keep out the light of those truths he was going to produce, contrary to the liberty they had promised, interrupted him, under color that what he was about to say, tended not only to justify the action for which he was accused, but to cast a ball of division among those who were present.

To this he would have answered, but was not permitted to finish what he began to say, or hardly any one thing he endeavored to speak in his defense during the whole trial; Mr. Arthur Annesley particularly charging him with the exclusion of the members in the year 1648, of which number he had been one; to which he only replied, 'That it seemed strange to find a man who sat as a judge on the bench to give evidence as to witness in the Court.'

These irregular proceedings unbecoming a court of judicature, obliged Mr. Carew to address himself to the jury, leaving them to judge of the legality of his trial; and appealing to their consciences, whether he had been permitted to make his defense.

According to Edmund Ludlow, On the fifteenth (15 October 1660), Mr. John Carew suffered there also, even their enemies confessing that more steadiness of mind, more contempt of death, and more magnanimity could not be expressed.