Carvile’s father and his uncle Robert raised the family from obscurity by military service on the Scottish border during the reign of Elizabeth. Carvile inherited property on the Percy estate at Prudhoe, and served the 9th earl of Northumberland as solicitor in the first years of his career. He maintained his connection with the earl for many years, leasing Percy lands at Nun Monkton, eight miles from Aldborough, representing the earl at assizes, collecting his rents, and assisting his officers to inquire into his debts.
From the outset of his parliamentary career, Carvile was an active Member. During the subsidy debate of 15 Feb. 1621 he offered qualified support to Christopher Brooke’s* call for a swift grant of two subsidies for relief of the Palatinate:
If we look to have ease of our grievances, we must procure the king’s gracious favour ... Therefore I think one subsidy and two fifteenths to be levied during the session; for if we delay till all grievances be heard, it will be too late and so to no purpose ... And that is as much as can be levied, considering the necessity of the country.
The chief grievance, he held, was ‘that out of every £1,000 levied in the country scarce £200 comes to His Majesty’, an allusion to the peculations of monopolists, against whom a head of steam was already building in the Commons; ‘I doubt not but that the king will be willing to have them examined’, he insisted with a confidence borne out only a few days later, when investigations into the patentees commenced.
Carvile was as involved in local issues as national ones, sometimes taking his cue from Wentworth. The latter’s controversial victory in the Yorkshire election produced a formal complaint to the privileges’ committee, and while Wentworth’s conduct was exonerated, two high constables were accused of impropriety, having issued warrants to ‘will and require’ the freeholders to give their voices for Wentworth. At a hearing on 23 Mar., Sir Henry Widdrington called for the constables to be punished, but Carvile insisted that the phrase ‘will and require’ was common usage in Yorkshire, and claimed that the summons before Parliament was sufficient punishment; the House ultimately settled on a public submission at the next quarter sessions. On 14 Mar., when it was decided that the Durham enfranchisement bill should erect only two new borough constituencies rather than three, Wentworth called for Barnard Castle to be dropped from the bill so that Hartlepool might be retained. Carvile also spoke in favour of Hartlepool, which had a charter from the Crown, and insisted that if any borough were to be dropped, it should be the bishop’s town of Durham; he was overruled by Secretary Calvert, who reminded the House that Barnard Castle belonged to the duchy of Cornwall and that its enfranchisement was desired by Prince Charles.
England’s involvement in the confessional wars in Germany naturally aroused fears about the domestic Catholic threat, and Carvile was named to the committee for the bill to prevent recusants evading fines by means of fictitious trusts (2 Mar.), a measure endorsed by Frescheville. Religious tensions resurfaced on 1 May, when the Commons voted to punish the Catholic lawyer Edward Floyd for insulting the king’s daughter and son-in-law. James’s request that the Commons’ justify its right to punish Floyd exposed the precarious nature of the House’s ruling, and Carvile’s claim that ‘if any foreigner offend justly any Member of this House in words, we may convent and punish him’ was hardly relevant, as Floyd had criticized members of the royal family rather than Parliament.
When the parliamentary session resumed in November, Sir John Vaughan* and Sir Henry Carey I*, having been raised to the Irish and Scottish peerages respectively, absented themselves from the roll call held on 21 November. Sir Edward Coke and others argued that, as foreign patents did not run in England, these two Members should resume their seats, but Carvile doubted whether those liable to serve as lords elsewhere could continue to sit in the English House of Commons; further investigation of the case was ordered.
No Parliament man ought to be sued in the Star Chamber, nor in any court but in Parliament, during the Parliament time. If a Parliament man may be sued in Star Chamber, then all the Members, or the best Members of the House, may be drawn from the business of the House to answer a riot or any other business there...
As one diarist observed, this prolix exposition of parliamentary privilege served ‘little purpose’.
Over the next few years Carvile became involved in litigation relating to lands in Yorkshire. In 1617 he sublet the rectory of Kirby Wharfe from Sir Edwin Sandys*, but the latter refused to renew the lease in 1622, citing Carvile’s ‘uncertainties, mutabilities and irresolutions’, and so gave rise to a futile Chancery suit.
During the 1624 Parliament, Carvile was much less vociferous than he had been in 1621. He was clearly not one of those the duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles solicited to support a breach with Spain before the start of the session, as he is not recorded to have spoken during the supply debates in the first month of the session. The only support he gave to the ‘patriot’ cause came during the investigation of an allegation against the hispanophile lord keeper Williams, who had issued a Chancery decree depriving a widow of an advowson during a jurisdictional dispute with the Court of Wards. Carvile, seconding Sir Edward Coke, considered this an abuse of power, insisting ‘that blame should be laid where it is deserved’ - in other words, with Williams. However, no further charges were substantiated, and attempts to impeach Williams came to nothing.
Carvile was re-elected at Aldborough in 1625, this time with Richard Aldburghe*, son of the local landowner. He tabled a fresh draft of the equity court appeals bill on 22 June, which received a first reading the following day, but progressed no further. He may have left Westminster to avoid the plague: named to two bill committees on 25 and 27 June, he thereafter vanished from the record, and there is no indication that he attended the Oxford sitting in August.
The 1626 Parliament was dominated by the question of Buckingham’s impeachment, which encouraged all but the most vociferous MPs to keep silent; even Wentworth, pricked as sheriff of Yorkshire to keep him out of the Commons, spent much of the session trying to convince the duke of his loyalty. Carvile, however, contributed to the debates regularly, rarely attacking Buckingham directly, but trying to offer less partisan criticism, albeit with little success. The first charge levelled against the favourite concerned an order he had issued detaining a French ship, the St. Peter of Le Havre, which had provoked an embargo on English ships in France. On 23 Feb. Carvile appears to have cited a letter from France blaming the embargo on Buckingham’s arrest warrant. If so, Carvile was backing the duke’s enemies. However, a further speech delivered on 1 Mar., when Wandesford moved to petition King Charles to take diplomatic action against the French embargo, was somewhat less combative. Carvile observed that there was no conclusive proof that the St. Peter had been carrying Spanish contraband at the time of its arrest, and urged that the ship be released, with compensation. He was careful to stress that ‘punishment of the person’ responsible for the arrest, namely the duke, should not be undertaken, but insisted that the culprit should bear the charge of the compensation. The Commons resolved on a much harder line, however, and summoned Buckingham for questioning, thereby giving affront to the Lords and moving the king to leap to the defence of his favourite.
The quid pro quo for allowing proceedings against Buckingham to go ahead was a generous grant of supply, an issue over which the Commons dragged its heels. When the House eventually considered the matter on 27 Mar., Carvile was happy to go along with the consensus for three subsidies, but, echoing others, he declared himself ‘against the [three] fifteenths, which are paid by the occupiers of lands’ as ‘the north parts are not able to endure it’. Instead of voting fifteenths he favoured adding an additional subsidy ‘or a subsidy and a half’. However, his motion was eventually rejected.
The king considered the sum voted wholly inadequate, and briefly threatened a dissolution. He was apparently persuaded to continue the session by William, 3rd earl of Pembroke, on the understanding that the Commons would improve upon their initial offer. A number of Members attempted to evade any increase in the supply grant by moving to consider alternative methods of raising funds, including Carvile, who, citing a precedent from the reign of Edward I, argued for a tax on usurers and on those who sold offices and benefices or who demanded excessive fees. He also suggested that those who informed against the extortions of others should have their liability to this tax waived.
Carvile’s conduct during the 1626 session does not seem to have caused him to fall into disfavour at Court, as secretary of state (Sir) Edward Conway I* recommended his son Henry for a fellowship at Oxford in 1627. However, the parliamentary seat at Aldborough went to another man in 1628, and, bereft of parliamentary privilege, Carvile was subsequently outlawed for debt. In July 1633 Wentworth, as arbitrator of the Steeton estate dispute, ordered him to pay Culpepper £800, whereupon he took shelter from his creditors in the Temple. In the following year Culpepper petitioned the Privy Council for relief, claiming that Carvile intended to evade his obligations by joining Wentworth in Ireland. Carvile was taken into custody, but released under bond on 18 Feb. 1635. Nothing further is known about his fate; he probably either died or fled to Ireland. No other Member of the family entered Parliament.