CAREY, John (c.1553-1617)

Descended from a Devon gentry family, the Careys came to national prominence after William Carey, an esquire of the body to Henry VIII, married Mary Boleyn, the king’s sometime mistress, and sister to Queen Anne Boleyn. Their only son, Henry Carey^†, 1st Lord Hunsdon was raised to the peerage in 1559 by his cousin Elizabeth I, who also bestowed on him properties in seven counties, including Hunsdon House, a palatial residence formerly occupied by the queen’s siblings before their accession to the throne. One of Elizabeth’s most trusted advisers, Hunsdon held a number of important military commands, including the governorship of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the Scottish border, and also served as captain of the gentlemen pensioners and lord chamberlain.22 Clutterbuck, iii. 180-1; C142/286/170; Hist. of the King’s Works ed. H.M. Colvin, iv. pt. 2, p. 156. Following his death in 1596, Hunsdon’s court offices passed to his eldest son George Carey^†, 2nd Lord Hunsdon, who was held in similar affection by the queen. However, George, who also served as captain of the Isle of Wight, suffered from a debilitating illness in his final years, and lost his positions at court shortly after Elizabeth’s demise.23 Clutterbuck, iii. 181; E407/1/22; APC, 1597, p. 50; CSP Carew, 1601-3, p. 44; Cat. of Berkeley Castle Muniments ed. I.H. Jeayes, 323-4; CPR, 1582-3 ed. L.J. Wilkinson (L. and I. Soc. cclxxxvi), 105; H. Ellis, Orig. Letters, 1st ser. iii. 66; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 9.

John Carey, the subject of this biography, was the second surviving son of the 1st Lord Hunsdon. He apparently spent much of his early life at court, where he became a gentleman pensioner. However, in 1593 he was dispatched to Berwick-upon-Tweed to serve as resident deputy to his father, the absentee governor. This strategic garrison town remained his home for the next decade. During that time he gradually expanded his local influence until, as warden of the East March, he became one of the most important figures in northern England. Peregrine Bertie^†, 13th Lord Willoughby de Eresby, who served as governor of Berwick from 1598 to 1601, described him as ‘much beloved of the soldiery and gentry, and very wise’, though he was also known for his hot temper.24 Clutterbuck, iii. 181; Watts, 107; HMC Ancaster, 339. As next male heir to his brother George, whose only surviving child was a daughter, Carey stood to inherit the Hunsdon barony. He also aspired to some of George’s offices, such as the lord chamberlainship, or the captaincy of the Isle of Wight. However, although George’s health was failing by 1601, he lingered for another two years, outliving the queen by six months. Thus, Carey was still stationed at Berwick in March 1603, when his brother Robert (Carey^*, later 1st earl of Monmouth) arrived there with news of Elizabeth’s death. Carey promptly proclaimed James VI of Scotland as the new king of England, and welcomed him when he crossed the border at Berwick three weeks later.25 CSP Carew, 1601-3, p. 44; J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 55-6; Scott, 187. Nevertheless, with both kingdoms now under a single monarch, the need for a fortified border was gone, and moves were made to reduce or even dissolve the Berwick garrison. By the end of June Carey had resigned as warden of the East March, and was winding up his affairs at Berwick in readiness to stand down as lieutenant governor. James granted him a pension of £424 as compensation for his loss of office, but did not offer him alternative employment. When George finally died in September 1603, Carey became 3rd Lord Hunsdon, with a substantial landed estate and a grand Hertfordshire mansion, but at the age of around 50 he was effectively pushed into early retirement.26 Watts, 134; HMC Hatfield, xv. 135-6; C142/286/170.

Hunsdon is not known to have exercised electoral patronage ahead of the 1604 session of Parliament, but he most likely supported the return of his kinsman Sir Henry Carey^‡ (later 1st Viscount Falkland [S]) as the senior knight for Hertfordshire.27 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 176. On taking his own seat in the Lords, Hunsdon attended virtually the entire session, missing just three sittings (26 Mar., 28 Apr. and 28 May) and attracting 17 appointments. Reflecting his long years of service on the Scottish border, he was nominated for the legislative committee concerning Berwick-upon-Tweed’s charter. He was also named to conferences with the Commons about the proposed Anglo-Scottish Union and the controversial book about the Union by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol. In addition, he was appointed to scrutinize four bills to naturalize Scottish courtiers.28 LJ, ii. 272a-b, 278a, 284a, 309a, 332b.

Hunsdon presumably took a close interest in the bill for the restitution of William Paget^* (thereafter 5th Lord Paget), a distant kinsman, since the property which the latter sought to recover included West Drayton manor, Middlesex, then the home of the 2nd Lord Hunsdon’s widow.29 Ibid. 267b; CP, x. 281; D. Lysons, Mdx. Parishes, 34; PROB 11/102, f. 95. Named to the committee for this measure, he was also nominated to help review the official record of the Lords’ proceedings in resolving the dispute over the barony of Abergavenny. This latter appointment in turn helps to explain his inclusion on the committee for the bill concerning the estates of Edward Neville^*, the newly recognized 8th (or 1st) Lord Abergavenny.30 LJ, ii. 307a, 337a. Hunsdon was nominated to two other conferences, on wardship and the bill for continuance or repeal of expiring statutes. The subjects of his remaining committee appointments included a bill for relief of plague victims, and two successive bills for suppressing Catholic propaganda.31 Ibid. 290a, 301b, 303a, 325b, 329a.

In the course of 1604 Hunsdon relinquished his remaining northern commissions, becoming instead a magistrate in Hertfordshire and Essex. He suffered a major embarrassment in early 1605, when one of his chaplains, Thomas Bywater, a puritan firebrand, was arrested after presenting the king with a book demanding a more godly Protestant regime. The baron cooperated with an official search of Bywater’s chamber, and hastened to distance himself from this troublesome cleric.32 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 65, 83, 107.

Hunsdon was present when the 1605-6 parliamentary session opened on 5 Nov., and in total attended three-quarters of its sittings, his only extended absence occurring in April 1606. With the legislative agenda initially dominated by the Gunpowder Plot, he was named to help review the laws for preserving the Church and state, and suggest improvements. The Commons undertook the same task, and Hunsdon was appointed to the conference at which the two Houses compared notes. He was again nominated to the committee for a bill to suppress Catholic books, and also named to scrutinize two other anti-recusant measures.33 LJ, ii. 360b, 367b, 380b, 419b. Evidently considered one of the more godly members of the Lords, he was appointed to the committees for both versions of the bill to prevent blasphemous swearing, and to a conference on various ecclesiastical grievances. In addition, he was nominated to scrutinize the bill to restrain the use of excommunication by church courts.34 Ibid. 365a, 381a, 411a, 437a. Hunsdon’s 15 remaining appointments were all to bill committees. Reflecting his recent residence in the Home Counties, their topics included the proposal to construct a ‘new river’ from Hertfordshire to London, building restrictions in the capital’s suburbs, and reform of the Marshalsea Court.35 Ibid. 389a, 437a, 441a.

Hunsdon was again a regular figure in the Lords during the 1606-7 parliamentary session, being present for five-sixths of the sittings, with no extended breaks in service. Despite his diligence, he was named to just 17 legislative committees out of a possible 41. Predictably, his appointments included the bill to abolish laws hostile to Scotland, while he was again nominated to consider measures to restrict building work in the London area and reform the Marshalsea Court.36 Ibid. 460b, 516b, 520a. The topics under discussion in his other bill committees included crown grants of copyhold lands, an exchange of lands between the king and the archdiocese of Canterbury, free trade with Spain, Portugal and France, and the restraint of ecclesiastical Canons issued without Parliament’s approval.37 Ibid. 464b, 503a, 504a, 524b.

While not a complete stranger to the court, Hunsdon seems not to have been a regular face at Whitehall. He had to be summoned from the country in July 1606 to help greet the visiting king of Denmark, and although his presence was occasionally noted at royal festivities, his dealings with the crown mostly concerned his efforts to secure better grants of those properties which he held from the monarch. At Hunsdon House he maintained a suite of rooms in which to entertain James, but it is unclear whether the ‘king’s side’ was ever used for this purpose.38 Add. 11402, f. 113; Nichols, ii. 141; HMC Hatfield, xx. 121-2; SO3/4, unfol. (Dec. 1609); PROB 11/129, f. 234v. In 1608, he responded to a request for him to settle various debts owed by his family to the crown, by insisting that he was not personally responsible for any of the sums concerned. He did, however, contribute £20 towards the aid for Prince Henry’s knighthood in the following year.39 SP14/37/48; 14/49/54.

In November 1609 Hunsdon’s son Henry (Carey^*, later 1st earl of Dover) was returned to the Commons in the Sussex by-election, presumably with the backing of his uncle, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham.40 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 404. The baron himself resumed his seat in the Lords three months later, attending the House regularly until 19 May, when he was excused indefinitely on account of a plague outbreak at his house, which killed two of his servants. On 29 June he indicated that he expected to return after one more week, but in fact he remained absent until 16 July, thereafter attending every sitting until the dissolution. In total he missed 44 per cent of this first session of 1610.41 LJ, ii. 596a, 631a-b.

Despite his interrupted service, Hunsdon received 18 nominations. Appointed in mid-February to confer with the Commons about the state of the crown’s finances, he was automatically named to all the subsequent conferences on the Great Contract. He was selected to attend the king when the issue of wardship reform was first broached with James, and then nominated for two further audiences relating to this question.42 Ibid. 550b, 556b, 564b, 569a. Hunsdon was also named to a conference about Dr Cowell’s controversial book, The Interpreter, which was deemed to have maligned Parliament. Appointed to the committee for the bill to punish the corrupt patentee Sir Stephen Proctor, he was subsequently named to a conference about the proposal to exclude the offender from the general pardon. In July the baron was nominated to a subcommittee of the whole House, which was required to consider a bill to improve the king’s personal safety in the wake of Henri IV’s assassination.43 Ibid. 557b, 647b, 651a, 657a. Hunsdon’s legislative appointments included both versions of the bill to found a hospital and school at Thetford, Norfolk (the borough’s patron was Hunsdon’s kinsman Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton), along with measures relating to the handling of stolen goods in London, and a proposed new water supply for Chelsea College, Middlesex. When a bill to prevent clerical pluralism was found to be flawed, he was named to a subcommittee of the whole House to consider the matter.44 Ibid. 569b, 583b, 587b, 600a, 645a. On 3 Mar. he attended a recantation at Paul’s Cross by a sometime Catholic controversialist, Theophilus Higgins, who had engaged in a literary dispute with Hunsdon’s former brother-in-law, Sir Edward Hoby^‡.45 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 108.

Hunsdon missed only three sittings during the brief second session of 1610, and received seven nominations. These included two conferences about the doomed Great Contract, and legislative committees concerned with the country’s timber supplies, the management of Prince Henry’s estates during his minority, and lawsuits over bequests of property.46 LJ, ii. 669a, 671a, 675a, 677a, 678a; HMC Hastings, iv. 222-6. Appointed in December a commissioner to prorogue the session and then, in February 1611, to dissolve the Parliament, he fulfilled both duties.47 LJ, ii. 683b, 684b.

Hunsdon attended Prince Henry’s funeral in December 1612, but by now he rarely participated in court events.48 Harl. 5176, f. 208. In the elections for the 1614 Parliament, he secured the return of his son Henry as senior knight for Hertfordshire.49 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 177. Hunsdon was present for all but two sittings of this short session. However, he was appointed to just three of the nine committees established by the Lords. The first was to confer with the Commons about the bill to include the Elector Palatine’s children in the English royal line of succession. His other appointments were for bills to prevent lawsuits over bequests of property and preserve timber supplies, matters which he had been asked to consider in 1610.50 LJ, ii. 692b, 694a, 697b.

As Hunsdon grew older, his thoughts turned to his own mortality. Although his father had established a family vault in Westminster Abbey, Hunsdon, in a decision which reflected the family’s loss of position under James, built a large private chapel at Hunsdon church, fitted out with some of the best Jacobean joinery in Hertfordshire. There, he erected his own enormous tomb in 1616, a conventional design but evidently the work of a top London mason. He apparently remained active in county politics until the end of his life, and was certainly the subject of local gossip, particularly in the summer of 1616, when seven men were hanged for stealing £700 from his house.51 Reg. Westminster Abbey, 114; P.M. Hunneyball, Architecture and Image-Building in Seventeenth-Century Herts. 33, 89, 143-4; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 378, 398. Hunsdon made his will on 31 Mar. 1617, requesting burial at Hunsdon church, his funeral to be in accordance with his ‘degree and calling’. To his wife he left his London house, and estates in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, with the intention that his younger son Charles would inherit these properties in due course. His heir Henry was bequeathed the furnishings of the main reception rooms at Hunsdon House, but not his other goods and chattels, which passed to Lady Hunsdon, the executrix of the will. Henry was strictly enjoined not to challenge these provisions, which suggests some tension between him and his mother.52 PROB 11/129, ff. 234-5. Hunsdon died about a week later, being buried in his private chapel on 7 April. The Hunsdon barony passed to his son Henry.53 Hunsdon’s i.p.m. (C142/374/95) is largely illegible, and no other source for his death date is known.