EVANS, George, 1st Baron Carbery [I] (c.1680-1749), of Caharas, co. Limerick, and Laxton, Northants.

According to the 1st Lord Egmont, Carbery’s grandfather was a sergeant in Cromwell’s army, who set up as a cobbler in co. Cork:

but being a cunning, industrious and saving man, by buying army debentures and other opportunities that offered, laid the foundation of a large estate, which his son and grandson, the present lord, by parsimony have improved to near £6,000 a year.1HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 388.

Carbery himself acquired the Laxton estate in England by marriage and had connexions with Wiltshire through his mother’s family. In 1715 he and Charles Allanson were sent down to Westbury by Lord Cowper and other leading Whigs to challenge Lord Abingdon’s Tory interest there. Though unsuccessful at the election, on petition he and Allanson were declared elected by the Whig House of Commons. In Parliament he voted for the septennial bill in 1716 and the peerage bill in December 1719, but was absent on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, January 1719. In 1722 he was again defeated but this time, though ‘the merits of that election [were] undoubtedly against’ his opponent, his petition failed on a technical point.2Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss 68, n.d. However, one of the sitting Members having elected to sit for Middlesex, Carbery came in at the ensuing by-election, despite a further petition. He did not stand again, dying 28 Aug. 1749.