CAREY, Sir Edmund (1559-1637), of Dauntsey, Wilts.; later of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster and Culham, Oxon.

Carey was a first cousin of Elizabeth I through his grandfather’s marriage to Mary Boleyn, the queen’s aunt. His father, one of Elizabeth’s most trusted courtiers, was created Baron Hunsdon in 1559, and the family remained in favour during the following reign, when his brother Robert became Prince Charles’s governor. Robert was rewarded in 1626 with the earldom of Monmouth, while Carey’s nephew, the 4th Lord Hunsdon, became earl of Dover in the following year. B. Burke, Dormant ... and Extinct Peerages, 102-3. Carey himself enjoyed a much less distinguished career, despite the tangible benefits of his privileged background. He first entered Parliament in his mid-twenties, relying on his family to provide him with his early seats at Newport, Oxford and Buckingham. HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 545. A brief military interlude in 1586-8 saw him accompany the earl of Leicester to the Netherlands, where he was rewarded with a knighthood and a captaincy. During the Armada campaign he commanded the queen’s bodyguard. R.C. Strong and J.A. Van Dorsten, Leicester’s Triumph, 112.

Carey apparently remained at Court during the following decade, but the minor grants of royal land that he procured failed to offset his expenses. By 1596 he was reduced to selling the property that he had acquired through his first marriage. However, following an appeal for help to Sir Robert Cecil†, he received the keepership of Hyde Park, and by 1598 he had become an esquire of the body. CPR, 1590-1 ed. S.R. Neal (L. and I. Soc. cccviii), 49; SO3/1, f. 305; Eg. 2146, f. 17v; HMC Hatfield, vi. 280-1, 286. If Carey hoped that his second marriage, to the wealthy widow Elizabeth Danvers, would finally resolve his financial problems, he was probably disappointed. The formidable Elizabeth agreed to the match on condition that Carey used his influence at Court to obtain pardons for her sons Sir Charles† and Henry, who had been convicted of murder in 1594. Once this objective was achieved, with £1,500 paid in compensation to the victim’s brother, Sir Walter Long†, Carey was ‘kept ... to hard meat’. Aubrey’s Brief Lives ed. O.L. Dick, 78; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, ii. 329; Wilts. Arch. Mag. i. 305-21; CSP Dom. 1598-1601, pp. 67, 78. To make matters worse, Sir Charles Danvers was attainted and executed in 1601 for his part in Essex’s rebellion, and Carey was unable to prevent the confiscation of his stepson’s property by the Crown. APC, 1600-1, p. 489; CSP Dom. 1601-3, pp. 293-5; HMC Hatfield, xiv. 193- 4. Nevertheless, the Danvers marriage provided Carey with a country seat at Dauntsey, and in September 1601 he secured election as a Wiltshire knight, on the recommendation of the lord lieutenant, the 1st earl of Hertford, who commended his ‘experience, knowledge and wisdoms’. Longleat House, Thynne mss vii. f. 212.

Carey lost his principal Court role upon the queen’s death, but in February 1603 he had also procured the lesser post of knight harbinger, which he retained under the new regime. In April 1604, with the assistance of Sir Robert Cecil, now Lord Cecil, he obtained 1,000 marks as compensation for an earlier Crown lease that had proved defective. CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 100; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 122; SO3/2, unfol. (Sept. 1604); C66/1557. Even so, Carey’s financial problems continued, and he angered Cecil in 1606 by mortgaging his interest in Hyde Park for £700, in order to fund a dowry for one of his daughters. He was obliged to surrender his keepership in the following year. HMC Hatfield, xviii. 384-5, 417; xix. 53.

Carey is not known to have stood in the 1604 parliamentary elections. However, in January 1606 he was returned in a by-election at Calne, some six miles from Dauntsey, conceivably again with the earl of Hertford’s backing. His main objective in re-entering the Commons was doubtless to support the bill to restore his stepson Henry Danvers to the estates forfeited in 1601. Although he was not recorded as speaking in the measure’s favour, he was named to its committee on 13 March. The bill received the royal assent at the end of the session. CJ, i. 283b; HLRO, O.A. 3 Jas.I, c. 35. In total, Carey received 12 nominations during this session, including three for the committees of other private estate bills (22 Jan.; 1 and 4 April). CJ, i. 258a, 291b, 293b. Evidently interested in religious affairs, he was appointed to conferences with the Lords on the recusancy laws and other ecclesiastical grievances (3 Feb., 10 Apr.), and named to consider bills on church government and the avoidance of Anglican sacraments (1 and 7 April). Ibid. 263a, 291b, 294b, 296b. He was also nominated on 30 Jan. to help scrutinize John Hare’s radical bill for the reform of purveyance. Ibid. 261b.

Carey left no trace on the records of the 1606-7 session. However, during the first session of 1610 he was named to consider bills concerned with the estates of a Huntingdonshire gentleman, and the liability of entailed lands to debt payments (22 Feb., 30 June). He also acted on 2 May as a teller in a vote concerning the Commons’ latest message to the Lords about the Great Contract. Ostensibly he sided with many Members’ preference for a limited bargain relating only to the Crown’s powers of wardship, but in the absence of any speeches, his precise attitude towards the Contract is unclear. On 2 July he was granted privilege in relation to the arrest of one of his servants. Ibid. 398b, 424a, 444b-5a. He represented Calne once more in the 1614 Parliament, but again made no known contribution to its proceedings.

Carey was still knight harbinger in October 1614, but vacated the post shortly afterwards. Despite losing his formal role at Court, he was resident in the nearby parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 1625, and ceased to serve as a Wiltshire magistrate around that time. Lansd. 273, f. 34; E115/77/162. Following his final marriage in the early 1630s, he settled on his wife’s property at Culham, and was duly appointed an Oxfordshire magistrate. However, he was removed from the bench in July 1637 for failing to take his oath of office. PROB 11/124, f. 465v; C142/350/60; C231/5, p. 253. Carey drew up his will on 26 Aug. following, leaving his entire estate to his wife, Judith, whom he named as his executrix. Already ‘sick in body’, he died less than three weeks later, and was buried in Culham church, where a strikingly inaccurate epitaph preserves his memory. None of his descendants served in the Commons, but his great-grandson, Sir Robert Carey, gained a seat in the Lords when he succeeded to the barony of Hunsdon in 1677. PROB 11/176, f. 130 r-v; Parochial Collections ed. F.N. Davis (Oxf. Rec. Soc. ii), 108; Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerages, 102.