CARNABYE, Sir William (c.1593-1645), of Farnham, Alwinton, and Bothal Castle, Bothal, Northumb.

The Carnabys had settled in Northumberland by the mid-fourteenth century, and one of their number had represented the county in the 1404 Parliament.21Hist. Northumb. x. 408; HP Commons 1386-1421, ‘Sir William Carnaby’. Carnabye’s own branch of the family had established its seat at Farnham, about 20 miles north-west of Morpeth, which it had acquired by marriage during the reign of Henry VIII.22Recs. of the Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 143. That Carnabye apparently lacked a gentleman’s education at one of the universities or inns of court did not hinder his preferment to local office, and by the mid-1620s he was active as a Northumberland justice of the peace and deputy lieutenant.23SP14/130/8, f. 12; SP16/7/74, f. 101; SP16/66/86, f. 109. His standing in the county was such that he was returned for Morpeth in 1624 and as a knight of the shire in 1628.24HP Commons 1604-1629. He was a zealous collector of Ship Money during his term as county sheriff in 1635-6 and had several suits brought against him for the distresses he had levied on the estates of those who had been too slow to pay.25E134/14CHAS1/EAST31; E134/14CHAS1/MICH9; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 461; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of Ship Money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 159. In the first bishops’ war, he served as a volunteer in the troop of horse raised by the nothern magnate and future royalist general William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle.26Newcastle Mems. ed. Firth, 6. Carnabye had been on close terms with the earl since at least 1619, when he had been knighted at Cavendish’s main seat, Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire.27Notts. RO, DD/P/8/111, 8/114/1, 85/14; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 173.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Carnabye was returned for the Wiltshire constituency of Marlborough, where he was clearly a carpetbagger. His electoral patron was almost certainly either the future royalist grandee William Seymour†, 2nd earl of Hertford, or his brother, Sir Francis Seymour* of Marlborough Castle.28Supra, ‘Marlborough’. It is possible that Carnabye had been recommended to the Seymours by Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. Northumberland and Hertford were cousins by marriage, and in 1628 the earl’s brother Henry Percy* had been returned for Marlborough.29Supra, ‘Marlborough’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Marlborough’. In the event, Carnabye received no committee appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Carnabye was returned for Morpeth, taking the junior seat to John Fenwick.30Supra, ‘Morpeth’. Carnabye would have been well known to the town’s voters, for his second seat was at Bothal Castle, some three miles from the borough.31BHO, Ct. of Chivalry database, ‘97 Carnaby v Johnson and Carnaby’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Carnaby’. He was named to seven committees in this, his fourth Parliament, of which only one – the committee set up on 16 February 1641 to investigate the proceedings of the court of wards – addressed the perceived abuses of the personal rule of Charles I.32CJ ii. 61b, 69b, 101a, 108a, 152a, 172b, 196a, 219b, 423b, 438a, 515a, 591b. His main concern at Westminster was apparently the relief of the northern counties, where the quartering of the English and Scottish armies since the second bishops’ war had been causing considerable hardship.33CJ ii. 21a, 73b, 79b, 82a, 87a, 88a, 152a. He was named to several committees for supplying and disbanding the armies, and on 4 March 1641 he joined John Fenwick in pledging £500 towards securing a City loan for this purpose.34CJ ii. 88a, 152a; Procs. LP ii. 628, 629. Perhaps his most important, and certainly puzzling, appointment in the Long Parliament came on 9 February 1641, when he was a majority teller with Henry Marten in support of adding six Members to the committee for considering the root and branch petition and a remonstrance from London’s godly ministers for further reformation in religion.35CJ ii. 81b. Although the Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Baillie saw this vote as a victory for the root and branch interest at Westminster, in fact the opposing tellers, Sir Edward Dering and Sir John Clotworthy, were far more godly-minded than were Marten and Carnabye.36Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. i. 302. Indeed, Carnabye’s royalist allegiance in the civil wars suggests a firm commitment on his part to episcopacy and the Prayer Book. Perhaps Dering and Clotworthy were not convinced that the influence of the three godly Members to be added to the committee would outweigh that of the three ‘unfriends’ to the Scots: Sir Thomas Rowe, Geoffrey Palmer and Robert Holborne.

Carnabye’s alignment with the court interest at Westminster was confirmed on 21 April 1641, when he was one of four Northumberland MPs who voted against the earl of Strafford’s (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) bill of attainder.37Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. The nature of his connection with the doomed lord lieutenant, if indeed he had one, is not clear. It is possible that Carnabye’s quarrel at Westminster with George Peard* the previous month had grown out of a disagreement over Strafford.38CJ ii. 111b-112a. On 15 June 1641, Carnabye again defied the parliamentary leadership, opposing a motion of Sir Henry Cholmley that the earl of Newcastle be replaced either as governor of the prince of Wales or lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire by Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire.39Procs. LP v. 173-4. With the recess looming in mid-August, Carnabye took his leave of the House and does not seem to have returned much before 17 March 1642, when he was a teller with none other than Oliver Cromwell on what seems to have been a non-partisan division about whether to raise the customs on sugar imports.40CJ ii. 259b, 482b. This would be Carnabye’s last parliamentary appointment. By 20 June, when the Commons threatened to proceed against him for absenting himself from the House without its permission, he was helping to secure Newcastle-upon-Tyne for the town’s newly-appointed royal governor, the earl of Newcastle.41CJ ii. 634a; PJ iii. 106; G. Duckett, ‘Civil war procs. in Yorks.’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. vii. 370. Carnabye was active on the Northumberland commission of array during the summer and autumn of 1642, and on 26 August the Commons disabled him from sitting for refusing to attend the service of the House and raising arms for the king.42CCC 1917, 1918, 1919; CJ ii. 738a. In the absence of any direct evidence as to Carnabye’s political and religious views, all that can be said about his decision to side with the king is that it is consistent with his pro-court stance in the Long Parliament.

By November 1642, Carnabye had been appointed treasurer of the earl of Newcastle’s northern royalist army.43SP28/133, pt. 5, f. 12; Newcastle Mems. ed. Firth, 88; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 10; 1625-49, p. 657. Carnabye’s younger brother Francis was commissioned by Newcastle as a colonel of foot in the northern army.44P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers (1981), 60. Carnabye fought as a gentleman ranker at the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644, and in the wake of the royalists’ defeat he and his brother accompanied Newcastle into exile on the continent.45Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 143; Newcastle Mems. ed. Firth, 43; Hist. Northumb. v. 333. But whereas Francis returned to England and the royalist war-effort, only to be killed at the battle of Sherburn-in-Elmet, William remained in exile. When he died in September 1645, the earl (now marquess) of Newcastle arranged for him to be buried in the graveyard of the Huguenot church at Charenton, near Paris. The funeral service was conducted by the Laudian cleric in exile, John Cosin, who officiated using the Book of Common Prayer ‘and afterwards made a sermon and then went before the corpse (according to the old English prelatical way) and there read the rubric for the burial of the dead’.46Perfect Occurrences no. 39, sigs. Qq2v-Qq3. According to one contemporary, the Carnaby brothers lost or expended £10,000 in the king’s service during the civil war.47Hist. Northumb. v. 333. No will is recorded for Carnabye. His estate was sequestered after the war and the fine set at a third – that is, £750. The guardian of Carnabye’s only surviving child, his daughter Jane, was the Northumberland parliamentarian Sir Thomas Widdrington*.48CCC 2046. None of Carnabye’s immediate family sat in Parliament.