CARTER, John (1623-76), of Kinmel, Denb.

Carter’s family came from Lilley, on the Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire border near Luton. His father, Thomas Carter, was a Cambridge graduate who was vicar of Dinton, Buckinghamshire, from 1610. His patron there for most of his service of over 30 years was Simon Mayne*.27Al. Cant.; Le Neve's Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 65; Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 138, 143, 145. John Carter was baptized at Dinton, but nothing is known of his early life. The witticism current from 1647 that in marrying Elizabeth Holland he had found ‘the best piece of Holland in the country’ turned on the allegation that he was once an apprentice to a linen-draper, but Carter was never an apprentice in either the London Drapers’ or the Clothworkers’ companies.28Pennant, Tours, iii. 154; ROLLCO website. After the civil war broke out, his father declared himself for Parliament, following his patron, Mayne; in due course becoming a member of the Westminster Assembly and a preacher favoured by Parliament. Thomas Carter preached at St Margaret’s, Westminster in June 1643 at a fast day, and his sermon was subsequently published with parliamentary approval.29T. Carter, Prayers Prevalencie (1643, E.60.2). Thomas Carter is said to have died in 1645 or 1646, an assertion perhaps on the basis of ex gratia payments made by both Houses towards the funeral of a ‘Mr Carter’, but this seems unwarranted, as the minutes of the Assembly record his being unusual among Presbyterian clergy in continuing to serve in the ministry after 1649.30Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 145; HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘John Carter’; CJ iv. 363b; LJ viii. 22b; Mins. and Pprs. of Westminster Assembly ed. Van Dixhoorn, i. 112-3.

John Carter seems to have entered the military service of Parliament as soon as he reached majority age. The earliest references to his army service that have been located date from September 1644, when he and his brother were involved in supplying arms to the Eastern Association, but he himself was commissioned in the army of Sir Thomas Myddelton*, second in command to Colonel Beale in an expedition sent from London to Wales by sea to assist Myddelton’s parliamentarian forces in the north.31SP28/18/227; SP28/346/217, 254; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 252-3. Driven for shelter into Milford Haven in November they were able to reinforce Rowland Laugharne† in Pembrokeshire before proceeding overland to besiege Chester.32CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 181; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 219. After Myddelton’s surrender of his commission under the terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance (3 Apr. 1645), Carter was subordinate to Thomas Mytton*, and in November 1645 was in command of forces in Montgomeryshire.33Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 264. His arrears of pay in December that year were payable to him out of the sequestered estates of William Petre, 4th Baron Petre, and he was put in charge of forces on the Welsh side of Chester.34SP28/346/254; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 383, 412. In January 1646, he acted as a commissioner for the surrender of Chester, assisted at the reduction of Ruthin castle while staving off a royalist skirmish from Denbigh (8-12 Apr.), and he subsequently beleaguered Denbigh, Holt and Caernarfon.35Phillips, Civil War in Wales, 294, 301, 309, 328. ‘A very pretty gentleman, and full of action’, he was a commissioner for the surrender of Caernarfon and of Anglesey in June 1646, and was party to the articles of surrender at Holt (13 Jan. 1647).36The Taking of Carnarven (1646), 6 (E.340.17); CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 515; Tucker, 'Civil War Colonel', 1-8. From Caernarfonshire he warned Sir Thomas Fairfax* of the slenderness of support for Parliament in the region, regarding the father of Griffith Bodurda* as among the few that could be relied upon.37Cal. Wynn Pprs. 298. He was serving as governor of Conwy, taken without his participation, when his marriage to Elizabeth Holland gave him a stake in the county.38Bangor Univ. Lib. Special Collections, Kinmel mss 696, 698. He is not to be confused with the Captain Carter entrusted with drawing up the charge against the Eleven Members in July 1647, and who later that year participated in the army debates at Putney.39Clarke Pprs. i. 151, 281, 368; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 249.

Carter was a controversial figure from his first arrival in north Wales. The flexible Archbishop John Williams snidely commented on how Carter, although governor of Conwy, ‘never served one hour’ in taking the town for Parliament, and appropriated funds intended for his soldiers. John Jones I*, himself excoriated by Williams as ‘universally hated’, described Carter in 1649 as ‘an odd man who cares not whom he oppresses if it be to his profit’.40Cal. Wynn Pprs. 302, 313. When the forces were being disbanded early in 1648, there was no further question of a Caernarfonshire levy, but Williams, capitalizing upon his local standing in north Wales to broker a regional settlement, attempted to minimize Carter’s role as being ‘inferior in this service’ to that of the local Members.41Cal. Wynn Pprs. 305. 306, 309. In the second civil war Carter, with George Twisleton*, relieved Mytton, under siege in Caernarfon, by a successful rebuff of the besieging forces led by Sir John Owen (5 June 1648).42Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1146; Sir Thomas Payton Lieutenant Generall (1648), 3-5 (E.447.1). Afterwards, both he and Twistleton were each awarded £1,000 towards their expenses and arrears.43CSP Dom. 1648-9, p.231.

In February 1650 Carter was named among the commissioners for propagating the gospel in Wales. He attended meetings of the north Wales commissioners at Caernarfon and Conwy in 1651 and 1652, but seems not to have been among the most active, who were willing to travel all over the region.44LPL, Comm. VIII/1. In 1651, during the prelude to Charles Stuart’s march on Worcester, the bishop of Ossory, Griffith Williams, managed the coup of preaching an assize sermon in Conwy that urged his congregation to join the Scots king. Carter sat through it. Williams recorded how Carter told him afterwards that he would have plucked him ‘by the ears out of the pulpit’, ‘but that he would not seem uncivil’. In the circumstances Carter’s response seems to have been very restrained, but his resolve to arrest Williams stiffened with the arrival of the governor of Beaumaris, Hugh Courtney*. Whatever their plans, the bishop escaped. Some time after this, Carter did disrupt a sermon of Griffith Williams’s at Llansannan, contradicting the bishop and removing him from the pulpit. William’s hope that Carter might be indicted at Ruthin sessions came to nothing.45The Persecution and Oppression ... of John Bale (1664), 14. Ten years after the propagation experiment and soon after the restoration of the king, Carter’s enemies alleged that he ‘acted violently’ as a commissioner, but there is no independent evidence of this.46NLW, Brogyntyn TH 7/2/18.

By 1650, Carter was a force to be reckoned with in north Wales, but his reputation as a sequestration commissioner was unenviable: in August 1648 he and Twisleton had been allowed £1,000 each in arrears from the fines on the north Wales rebels of that year, with further financial incentives to identify other ‘delinquents’. His appointment as a sequestrator in the region was confirmed in 1650.47CCC 131, 173. Working closely with Madrin, Carter became notorious for oppressive behaviour towards royalists. In February 1652, the council of state became uneasy at the arbitrary dealings of the pair with a royalist officer, Colonel Edward Gerard, and their pursuit of John Bodvell* was questioned by the Committee for Compounding in July 1653.48Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales, 120; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 131; CCC 1599, 1600. Carter had acquired the farm of the north Wales excise in 1650, paying £1,500 a year in rent, but the council of state found it necessary to rebuke him for high-handedness in his dealings with excise collection in Caernarfonshire in 1651. The council also drew his attention to the shortfall in the contingent of 500 men he and Twisleton had engaged to recruit for Irish service.49Bodl. Rawl. C 386, 20 Mar. 1650; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 82, 210. In 1652 he was accused of obstructing, ‘out of malice and evil will’ efforts by agents of the north Wales supernumerary soldiers to acquire the manor of Denbigh to settle their pay arrears.50I. J. Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Land, 1649-60’, (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1969), 144. Despite all this, he inspired confidence in his professional superiors from Thomas Mytton to Oliver Cromwell* and was trusted as a member of the 1651 high court of justice on the rebels who had joined Charles Stuart.

Carter’s authority rested on a surer foundation than military rank alone: he established permanent roots in Denbighshire through his marriage with a Kinmel heiress. Social prominence combined with his holding of major regional office to make him a credible contender in the Denbighshire parliamentary election of 1654. There is no evidence of any opposition to his candidacy. In the House ‘Colonel Carter’ was at once named to the important committee of privileges (5 Sept. 1654): the title of ‘Colonel’ seems to distinguish him from ‘Mr’ [Richard] Carter, the Cornish Member. He was one of the Members to whom the ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers was committed on 25 September, was named to the committee for the army and navy the following day, and to those on Irish affairs (29 Sept.), and public accounts (23 Nov.), as well as two concerning private estates on 3 and 21 November. On 18 January 1655 he was chosen for the public debts committee.51CJ vii. 366b, 370a,b, 371b, 381a, 387a, 419a. After the closure of the Parliament, in March 1655, Carter’s deputy Thomas Kynaston foiled a plot by royalist conspirators to take Conwy during his absence in London to visit Cromwell.52Bangor Univ. Lib. Special Collections, PEN/5/32A, 32D. Carter was by this time a reliable ally of the protectoral government, and was returned again to the 1656 Parliament, despite some initial opposition which did not harden into a challenge on election day.53Supra, ‘Denbighshire’; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 345-6.

In his second Parliament, Carter was more prominent than he had been during his first. At the outset, he was again named to the committee of privileges (18 Sept.), and was one of the contingent deputed to hold discussions with Lord Protector Cromwell (22 Sept.).54CJ vii. 424a, 426a, Between then and the following June, he was named or added to 44 other committees. About a third of these concerned petitions from aggrieved individuals or groups, but he was also named to committees involving public revenue, the maintenance of a godly ministry, naturalization, timber preservation, postage and suburban building.55CJ vii. 443a, 444b, 446b, 453b, 448b, 469a, 542a, 555a. He also sat on several of the Irish land award bills: when one of these was being read, on 24 June 1657, a clause offered on Carter’s behalf to award him an Irish advowson on long lease, ‘smelling of sacrilege’ to some Members, was withdrawn, but the House, swayed by Carter’s powerful friend and compatriot Lord Chief Justice John Glynne*, voted by 45 to 43 to pay him £3,000 arrears out of the navy prize office funds. Unsurprisingly, Carter was one of the yeas. This may have been pay-back for Carter’s trusteeship of Harwarden, Glynne’s new Flintshire estate, but the following month, he was obliged all the same to write to the lord protector’s council to obtain his money.56CJ vii. 529a, 549a, 573b, 549a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 304; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 15 (E.935.5); CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 32; NLW, Hawarden mss 337, 342, Bettisfield ms 1636.

Carter acted as a teller on two occasions in this Parliament. On 16 February 1657 he was teller for the noes who by 69 to 51 thwarted the dowager duchess of Hamilton’s claims on lands in Scotland awarded to George Monck*. He was teller for the yeas, defeated by 42 to 37, on 26 March over a clause regulating the price of French wines. He reported committees on Sir Hardress Waller’s Irish estate bill, (1 Apr.), and on the bill for wills and probate on 11 May.57CJ vii. 491b, 512a, 532b. He was an occasional, but not especially compelling speaker in debate. He spoke up for the loyalty of Thomas Tyrrell*, a Buckinghamshire former colonel who was being misrepresented in a petition to the House as a royalist under decimation (22 Dec. 1656). On 3 January 1657 he was one of three Members who doubted if a committee of the House could sit when Parliament was adjourned, and on 10 January Carter took the part of the wife in the committee to review the divorce petition of the son of Edward Scott†, finding himself thereby in the minority.58Burton’s Diary, i. 198, 297, 334-5.

Carter was not only a dependable supporter of the lord protector’s government, but was also a ‘kingling’.59Narrative of the Late Parliament, 23. On 6 and 10 March 1657 he was one of the House’s nominees to rephrase the monarchical ‘remonstrance’, work which resulted in a fresh document, the Humble Petition and Advice. On 25 March, he voted in favour of Cromwell’s accepting the kingship, and two days later was named to a committee to visit the lord protector on this business. On 6, 7 and 9 April he was part of the group promoting the Humble Petition and Advice and seeking Cromwell’s response.60CJ vii. 499b, 501b, 511a, 514a, 520b, 521a,b, He consistently interested himself in matters of military management. On 31 March he was one of the committee to review the indemnity bill, and on 1 May insisted on the justice of the House’s confirmation of compensation it had in the past offered those (especially soldiers) who had rallied to its cause.61CJ vii. 516a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 96. On 4 June he was one of the deputation to Cromwell on the processing of the assessment bill and other legislation, and the same day questioned whether a trial brought by the state should be delayed, after the House had consented to postponing other judicial hearings.62CJ vii. 545b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 174. On 6 June he intervened in the long debate on the Hele trust in Devon, which had for 20 years been the vehicle by which the Presbyterian John Maynard* had improved his interest with a range of corporate bodies in his own county. Carter’s comments on the rights of Hele’s heirs would not have been savoured by Maynard. He sympathized with the Irish petitioners against their taxation (12 June), and approved a repeal of it, thus lending his support to the lord deputy, Henry Cromwell*, who had brought in the petition.63Burton’s Diary, ii. 185, 226.

In the short final session of this Parliament, in January and February 1658, Carter’s committees were on the marriage registration bill (22 Jan.), the union of parishes in Huntingdon (26 Jan.), and the request to Cromwell to publish his Banqueting Hall speech (28 Jan.), Cromwell’s attempt to head off parliamentary disunity by surveying the threats to English liberties from overseas.64CJ vii. 581a, 588a, 589a, On 28 January, Carter was overruled by the Speaker for trying to curtail the speech, unhelpful to the government, of the republican Thomas Scot I*, and two days later he urged speedy settlement of the question of the title of the new Other House.65Burton’s Diary, ii. 378, 400. Soon after the closure of this Parliament, Carter was given a knighthood for his loyalty to the house of Cromwell, which persisted after Oliver’s death: a hostile commentator described Carter as ‘active and zealous’ for Richard Cromwell.66NLW, Brogyntyn TH 7/2/18. This despite his apparent lack of success in 1657 in acquiring the lucrative receivership of monthly assessments in north Wales.67Aylmer, State’s Servants, 368; SP18/181, f. 175.

Carter was re-elected for Denbighshire to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, apparently without a contest, and was named to the committee for elections (28 Jan.), for supply of the ministry in Wales and in the north of England (5 Feb.), for the review of treasury accounts (17 Feb.), for Irish and for Scottish affairs (1 Apr.), and to regulate business with the Lords (6 Apr.).68Supra, ‘Denbighshire’; CJ vii. 594b, 600b, 605a, 623a, 627a. These were important committees, and Carter was known to be a reliable supporter of the government. However, in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, the Cromwellians were under pressure from republicans and others out of sympathy with the protectorate. On 5 February he seconded the motion of Bennet Hoskins for the committee on the Welsh ministry, hoping for legislation, but he noted darkly that there were ‘many commissioners appointed to judge of ministers, that are against the ministry’.69Burton’s Diary, iii. 83. Whether Carter thus knowingly gave succour to the determined critics of the Rump Parliament’s scheme for propagating the gospel, 1650-3, is unclear. Earlier that day he had taken a far from relaxed view of William King, a mentally-disturbed man who had gained access to the House under the delusion that he was a Member, demanding he be searched for papers. On 12 February, when debates on the cases of various Members suspected of crypto-royalist associations led to a call that electors themselves not simply their representatives be disenfranchised, Carter opposed the suggestion by pointing out the politically mixed nature of the electorate.70Burton’s Diary, iii. 80, 256. Criticism of Carter himself came on 17 February. Griffith Bodurda, a fellow north Walian MP and associate of Carter’s, moved that the latter should be one of the army establishment committee. Reservations were expressed by the republican Sir Arthur Hesilrige, provoking Carter to explode

I am no accountant [officer accountable to the state], nor have meddled with money, nor am in any way concerned. As a soldier, I have fought and bled for you. If I be a fit Member of the House, I suppose I am a fit member of a committee.71Burton’s Diary, iii. 310-11.

In the same defensive spirit, on 22 March he objected to the petition against the Caernarvonshire return, composed apparently in the name of his military collaborator Thomas Madrin*, dismissing it as full of lies and unsigned.72Burton’s Diary, iv. 224.

On or just before 10 April 1659, Carter’s contribution to this Parliament was terminated when he was shot in the back while walking in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Whether this was a random or targeted attack is unclear, but it temporarily neutralized the military authority he had built up during the decade.73Cal. Wynn Pprs. 352. He had retained his governorship of Conwy throughout his period of parliamentary service; was probably deputy major-general in north Wales under James Berry* in the military dispensation of 1655-6, and in April 1658 had been commissioned to raise a regiment for the defence of the region.74Cal. Wynn Pprs. 349. The following month, the royalist Sir Roger Mostyn had been arrested and committed to his custody at Conwy.75Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 332. Fortuitously, Carter’s injuries prevented him from playing a significant role in either suppressing or declaring support for the royalist insurgency during the summer of 1659. In fact, his conspicuous support for the protectoral government did not imply immutable regional partisanship. Through the 1650s he had been building links with the north Wales gentry, including the Wynns of Gwydir and the family of John Glynne, friendships which would help him weather the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.76NLW, Bettisfield 1636; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 350. His wife’s sister and coheiress was married to the staunchly royalist William Price* of Rhiwlas. When the drift towards restoration was apparent, Carter quickly associated himself with Sir Thomas Myddelton* and his son, Thomas Myddelton*, in backing the monarchy, and was in return an early recipient of royal favour, having a fresh knighthood bestowed on him in June 1660. He continued as an active commander in the north Wales militia, and consulted with General George Monck* on the disposition of garrisons in the region.77Cal. Wynn Pprs. 356; Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 111, 113; CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 367, 414, 488; Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales (1971), 173. His was the third name in the list of 89 north Wales gentry who pledged their loyalty to Charles II and demanded prosecution of the regicides.78NLW, Wynn (Gwydir), 2272.

Carter was elected to the Convention of 1660 on the Myddelton interest, but played no major part in its work. Having acquired various regional perquisites and favours, he largely settled into the life of a north Wales esquire. He died on 28 November 1676, and was buried at St George’s church, Kinmel. His sister, who married Richard Vernon of Hanbury Hall, Worcestershire, was mother of Thomas Vernon†, Member for Worcestershire in 1715. Carter’s descendants sold Kinmel in 1720 in favour of Redbourne Hall, Lincolnshire. William Carter of Redbourne sat for Hull in 1741.79Tucker, 'Civil War Colonel’, 8.