Career
Trevor, whose father Sir John Trevor was Surveyor of the Queen"s Ships under Elizabeth I, was knighted in 1619. He was elected Member of Parliament for Flintshire in the Parliaments of 1624 and 1625. In 1628 he was elected Member of Parliament for Great Bedwyn and sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.
In November 1640 Trevor was elected Member of Parliament for Grampound in the Long Parliament, having connections with Cornwall through his mother, a Trevanion.
He took the parliamentary side during the Civil War, and he was sufficiently supportive of the trial of the King to survive Pride"s Purge and sit in the Rump. He seems to have been accepted as the spokesman for North Wales in many of the administrative committees that took over the country after the overthrow of the Monarchy, being twice elected to the Council of State, and also serving on the Committee of Both Kingdoms from 1648.
He was elected Member of Parliament for Steyning in 1659 for the Third Protectorate Parliament. Although he resumed his seat at Grampound in 1659 in the restored Rump after Richard Cromwell"s fall, he was an early supporter of the of Charles II, which ensured that he suffered no penalties for his earlier political loyalties after the King returned, being granted a royal pardon on 24 July 1660.
However, he had invested much of his fortune during the Commonwealth in buying up lands confiscated from convicted Royalists, and suffered considerable loss as a result.
Trevor"s son, also called Sir John Trevor (1626–1672), was an Member of Parliament with his father during the Commonwealth, and after the rose to become Secretary of State in 1668.
