Family and Education

b. c.1580, 3rd s.of Sir Edward Carey† (d.1618) of Aldenham, Herts. and Catherine, da. of Sir Henry Knyvett of E. Horsley, Surr.; bro. of Adolphus* and Sir Henry Carey I*.1 educ. G. Inn 1590; Queen’s, Oxf. matric. 22 Feb. 1594, aged 14;2 embassy, Madrid 1605.3 m. by 1609, Elizabeth (d.1623),4 da. and h. of Richard Bland of Carleton, Rothwell, Yorks., 4s. 3da.5 kntd. 23 Mar. 1605;6 suc. bro. in Great Gaddesden estate, Herts., 1609.7 d. 13 June 1631.8

Offices Held

Gent. of the privy chamber to Prince Henry 1610-12;9 commr. logwood imports 1620,10 trade 1621, 1622, 1625,11 Virg. plantation 1624;12 surveyor gen. of customs 1619-d.13

Kpr. of Marylebone Park, Mdx. 1615-d.14

Cttee. Virg. Co. 1621.15

Biography

Carey’s father, Elizabeth’s master of the jewel house, was reported to be seeking a place for him in the privy chamber in 1601.16 Four years later Carey was knighted and attended lord admiral Nottingham (Charles Howard†) on his embassy to Spain.17 In the years following his return Carey was granted the benefits of the recusancy of six Catholics.18 He inherited lands in Hertfordshire from his brother Adolphus in 1609, most of which he sold on to Lord Ellesmere (Sir Thomas Egerton†) shortly afterwards.19 Carey eventually found a place in the Household of Prince Henry. In 1611 he shared in a reversionary grant of Minster manor in the Isle of Thanet as a trustee for the debts of his eldest brother Sir Henry, and in the following year he was granted land in Yorkshire which augmented his wife’s inheritance in the area.20

At the general election of 1614 he was nominated for Woodstock by the high steward, (Sir) Thomas Spencer*, his distant kinsman.21 He was also connected to the borough’s recorder, Lawrence Tanfield*, through his brother’s marriage to Tanfield’s daughter. Carey was named to only two committees in the Addled Parliament, for the continuance, repeal or revival of old statutes (8 Apr. 1614), and to confer with the Lords about the Palatine marriage settlement (14 April).22 In 1615 he succeeded his father as keeper of Marylebone Park.

Re-elected to Parliament in 1621, Carey was named to six committees, including those for drafting a bill to prevent the export of ordnance (26 Mar.) and to consider a measure for stopping the extortion of customs officers (7 May).23 Carey had already purchased the reversion to the surveyorship-general of the customs (said to be worth £800 a year in 1627) from lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*), and was appointed a commissioner for trade during the Parliament.24 A bill to confirm the grant of Minster was introduced into the Lords in Feb. 1621, but ordered to ‘sleep’ at the request of Carey’s brother, now Viscount Falkland, ‘whom the said bill wholly concerneth’.25 Carey became a director of the Virginia Company at about this time, and in 1623 he associated himself with the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich*) in an internal dispute within the Company.26

In the last Jacobean Parliament Carey was again appointed to consider a bill to prevent extortion by customs officers (24 Mar. 1624), though he evidently attended only two of its six meetings.27 When the attack on Middlesex began he was named as a party to the farm of the great customs and testified in committee on 10 Apr.:

The lord treasurer did reserve for him [Carey] a 32nd part of the great farms because he, with others, by bidding for those farms, did help raise the price of it ... But he was not a partner in trust for the lord treasurer or any other, neither was it intended by him to have been a farmer in trust for any.28

According to his deposition, reported to the Lords on 7 May, he had withdrawn after learning that ‘I must enter into bond of £1,500 to the king, and that the managing of the business must be put into the hands of a few committees (the rest of us sitting for ciphers)’.29 He is not known to have taken any further part in the Commons’ proceedings, but at the end of April he petitioned the Upper House concerning the customs office. The Lords ordered Middlesex to reply, and included Carey among the aggrieved parties to whom the earl owed damages, but later noted that these two had agreed to ‘compound the same amongst themselves’.30

Carey was elected for Woodstock for the last time in 1625, but left no mark on the records of the Parliament. Tanfield’s death that same year deprived him of his interest at Woodstock, and he did not seek election again. He died intestate and was buried at Aldenham in June 1631; administration of his estate was granted to his brothers-in-law, Lord Barrett of Newburgh (Sir Edward Barrett*) and Sir George Manners*.31 Carey’s eldest son John was elected for New Windsor in 1679 but was later unseated on petition.

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Authors: Alan Davidson / Rosemary Sgroi

Notes

• 1. Her. and Gen. iii. 35, 39, 42.
• 2. GI Admiss.; Al. Ox.
• 3. NLW, Carreglwyd mss I/699.
• 4. Her. and Gen. iii. 44.
• 5. The Gen. n.s. xxiii. 201; Vis. Herts. (Harl. Soc. xxii), 135-6.
• 6. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 137.
• 7. PROB 11/113, f. 253v.
• 8. Her. and Gen. iii. 39.
• 9. Harl. 7009, f. 5; SP14/67/147.
• 10. CD 1621, vii. 410.
• 11. APC, 1621-3, pp. 80, 208; T. Rymer, Foedera, viii. pt. 1, p. 59.
• 12. Rymer, vii. pt. 4, p.144.
• 13. CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 582; E351/620-35.
• 14. C66/2029; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 275; 1628-9, pp. 583, 590; 1629-31, p. 67; APC, 1629-30, p. 93.
• 15. Recs. Virg. Co. ed. S.M. Kingsbury, i. 473.
• 16. Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 133-4; HMC Hatfield, xiv. 147.
• 17. HMC Hatfield, xvii. 303, 383.
• 18. Add. 34765, ff. 19, 25.
• 19. Her. and Gen. iii. 54; VCH Herts. ii. 203; H. Chauncy, Herts. ii. 497.
• 20. C66/1910, 1965; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 504, 1611-18, p. 94; H.W. Aldred, Minster, 4-9.
• 21. Liber Famelicus of Sir J. Whitelocke ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. lxx), 41.
• 22. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 35, 82.
• 23. CJ, i. 572b, 611b.
• 24. A. Friis, Cockayne Project, 424, 428; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 198.
• 25. LJ, iii. 21b, 29b-30a; E. Hasted, Kent, x. 275, 278.
• 26. Recs. Virg. Co. iv. 80; A. Brown, Genesis of US, 982.
• 27. CJ, i. 747b; C.R. Kyle, ‘Attendance Lists’, PPE 1604-48 ed. Kyle, 217.
• 28. ‘Nicholas 1624’, ff. 122, 124r-v, 140v, 144.
• 29. LJ, iii. 359b.
• 30. Ibid. 327a, 342b, 396a, 420b.
• 31. PROB 6/14, ff. 41, 77; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. i. 129.