SIR GEORGE CARY OF COCKINGTON; A DEVONSHIRE WORTHY OF THE ELIZABETHAN ERA. BY ROBERT DYMOND, F.S.A. (Read at Sidmouth, July, 1873) FEW names have been longer known in connection with this fair shire of Devon than the name of Cary. We find the manor of Kari recorded in Domesday, and it appears in the spelling of later times on the Ordnance map of our own day. The name is now applied to an ordinary farm homestead, which has replaced the old manor-house, in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Heath, five miles north-east of Launceston. Risdon, our county topographer of the seventeenth century, describes this parish as hemmed in with Tamar river on the one side and a pretty brook called Cary on the other, whereof (if I conceive not amiss) the surname of Carys took beginning; for in this parish that family possessed an ancient dwelling bearing their name." The "pretty brook " is frequently mentioned as Carywater in old family deeds at various dates from 1429 downwards, and it still retains the title. The manor continued in the hands of the Carys for several generations, and one branch of the family resided there until the reign of Elizabeth. It ceased, however, to be their principal seat as early as the reign of Richard II., when Sir William Cary settled himself at Clovelly, and his brother, Sir John, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, acquired, with many other goodly manors in North Devon, that of Cockington, on the pleasant verge of Torbay. The Chief Baron was one of the five judges who decided in favour of Richard II. against the Commissioners, who had attempted to subvert the Constitution, and, though he escaped the tragical fate at Tyburn of his colleague, the Lord Chief Justice Tresilian, he incurred the forfeiture of his ample estates, and died in poverty and exile at Waterford in 1404.* The attainder was reversed in Rotul. Parl., iii. 233, 238-244, 442; RYMER'S Fædera, t. iii., p. iv. 27. the succeeding reign in favour of Sir Robert Cary, the eldest son of the Judge.* This gallant is said to have won his spurs after defeating in the lists at Smithfield a doughty Knight of Arragon, who had challenged all comers to mortal combat. Sir Robert was succeeded by his eldest son Philip, the father of Sir William Cary, whose career affords an illustration of the vicissitudes in the fortunes of our great families. On the landing of Margaret of Anjou and her son at Weymouth, he joined with Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and other western men of rank, in collecting the army, which she vainly hoped to strengthen by a junction with the forces of her Welsh adherents. Intercepted by the rapid advance of Edward IV., the Lancastrians were compelled, in May, 1471, to try the issue of battle on the fatal field of Tewkesbury. In the total rout of the Queen's army the Earl of Devon fell fighting, but the Duke of Somerset, Sir William Cary, and other gentlemen of note, took refuge in the sanctuary of the abbey church. Notwithstanding the King's pardon, the refugees were treacherously beheaded two days after the battle. It is believed that Sir William's body was removed to his home at Clovelly, where his arms, impaled with those of Paulet, appear on the earliest of the numerous Cary monuments in the church of that romantic place. Sir William married twice, and it was through his second wife, Alice, a daughter of the good old Devonshire house of Fulford, that he became the progenitor of the ennobled and illustrious line of Carys, of which Lord Falkland is the living representative. From his first wife, Ann, daughter of Sir William Paulet, descended the Devonshire Carys; and Robert, her first-born son, described by Pole as "a grave lerned man in the laws," obtained from Henry VII. the restitution of the estates forfeited by his father's attainder fourteen years before. On the day after his marriage with Jane, a daughter of the ancient house of Carew, the bride, being demanded why she wore a pensive air, answered, that "Yesterday it was Care you, but to-day it is Care I." In spite of the pun, the lady's posterity flourished in the person of Thomas, her second son, who inherited Cockington, and by his wife, Mary, a daughter of John Southcott, left many children. Of these children, the eldest son and heir is the subject of the present sketch. George Cary must have been born in 1540, or in the following year, and though Prince is our sole authority for the state Rotul. Parl, iii. 484. + WARKWORTH's Chronicle, Camd. Soc. Pub. ment, he is probably correct in naming Cockington Court as the place of his birth. Of his early youth the family records reveal only slight traces, but it is evident that he enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education. About the year 1561 he found a richly-endowed wife, of his own age, in Wilmot, the young heiress and sole eventual representative of a line of the Giffards, residing at Yeo, near Bideford. Her pedigree, unnoticed by our county historians and in the Herald's Visitation, is found amongst the Cary manuscripts, compiled with minute care and proved by complete evidence, in the handwriting of her husband. While yet a child of fourteen, the hand of Wilmot Giffard had been bestowed on John Bury, Esq., of Colaton, Devon; but the marriage remained unconsummated for seven years, when proceedings for its dissolution were referred to the arbitrament of Lewis Pollard, Esquire, on behalf of Bury, and on the lady's part to Robert Cary, of Clovelly, who had married Margaret, her mother, the widow of John Giffard of Yeo.* Archbishop Parker signed the final sentence, and, while both were yet under twenty-one, George and Wilmot Cary entered upon a more fortunate union of twenty years' duration. Wilmot Cary died on the 21st of June, 1581, and a sepulchral brass on the floor of the chancel of Tormohun still displays her richly-attired effigy, with those of three infant daughters. † Of her five children, the two who survived their mother were the only son, George, whose tragical fate in Ireland will be mentioned hereafter, and Ann, who, in June, 1603, was married to Sir Richard Edgcumbe of Mount Edgcumbe, and died in January, 1625. At the time of his widowhood, George Cary, the father, was rising to eminence. He had become intimately associated with some of the greatest statesmen, and especially with the eminent lawyers of the Elizabethan era. Sir Willian Cordell, the Master of the Rolls, names him in his will, dated 1580, as one of the trustees of his hospital at Long Melford, in Suffolk, and in 1586 we find George Cary appointing as trustees of certain of his own manors Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Edmund Anderson, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; William Peryam, another Justice of the same Court; John Popham, then Attorney-General; and Edward Drewe and John Hole, Esquires. It is uncertain whether George Cary had himself adopted the legal profession, but it is clear that his talents were more prominently exercised in military and *Tor Abbey muniments. + Transactions of Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society, vol. v. administrative than in legal affairs. In 1584-5 he is found in active correspondence with his friend Walsingham, as Commissioner in charge of the defensive works at Dover harbour, in conjunction with the famous Sir Richard Grenville.* From Dover he was summoned to join, with other Deputy-Lieutenants of Devon, in the preparations for resisting the great invasion, planned with vast and costly care in a closet of the Escurial by Philip II. of Spain. The year 1588 found the gentlemen of Devon actively engaged in measures for securing their exposed coasts. Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins were arming ships for service on the sea, whilst other Devonshire worthies of scarcely less renown were busy in organizing the land forces. The county was divided into three military divisions, in each of which were raised two regiments of 800 men a-piece, nearly 5,000 in all. One regiment of the southern division was assigned to the command of Sir Edward Seymour, then the owner of Tor Abbey, and the other to George Cary. The issue of all this stirring work is well-known matter of English history. In the month of May, 1588, the great Armada passed up the English Channel, closely beset by the less numerous, though nimbler, vessels in which Drake and Hawkins served under the Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham. In July, Captain Jacob Whyddon, of the Roebuck, one of the vessels fitted out by Sir Walter Raleigh, captured a Spanish vessel, and brought his prize. into Torbay, in charge of two gentlemen commissioned by Sir Francis Drake. The Roebuck immediately returned to sea for further service against the Armada, leaving the Spaniard to the care of Mr. Cary and Sir John Gilbert of Compton. These gentlemen forthwith proceeded to land the prisoners and ordnance. They sent the guns and munitions. of war to the Queen's navy, to be employed against the late owners. The crew were consigned to the great barn of Tor Abbey, the largest and most secure place of confinement to be found in the neighbourhood. What there befel the unfortunate prisoners will appear by the following despatch to the Privy Council §: Our humble dutyes to your good Lordshipps. Whereas * Domestic State Papers, 1581-90, vols. 203, 213, 215, 217. These local details are mainly derived from the manuscripts preserved in the Record Office in London. The particulars and strength of the Devonshire regiments are stated in a paper headed, "Reasons to be alleged why Mr. Cary, under their Lordships' favour, ought to have the 150 men that were of Mr. Fulford's band, to be under his regiment." This document will be found in the Domestic Series of State Papers, 1581-90, vol. 203, art. 8. Ibid, vol. 213, art. 42. Ibid, vol. 213, art. 43. "there is one of the Spanishe Fleete brought into Torbay (as "yr honours have been heretofore adv'tised of) in weh shipp "there is almost foure hundred sowldyers and marryners, all "wch for dyvers respectes wee have taken out of the shipp "and brought them under saf gard unto the shoore. So xx or xxx marryners only excepted, wch wee have lefte in the sayd shipp to be the better helpe to bring the sayd shipp "into saff harborowe at this p'sent thoroughe the occasion "of her Maties service great waunt of marryners of our own "country. Yf it may so stand wth yr Lordshippes pleasure wee desyr to know yr resolution what shall become of these "people, our vowed enemyes. The charge of keeping them "is great, the perell greater, and the discontentment over "country greatest of all, that a nation so mitche misliking "unto them should remayne amongest them. To her Majestyes commandment and yr honor's direction we referr this action "and leekwyse o'selves, eftesones praying yr Lo: resolved determynation, we are thus bold under yor Lo: correction to "geve them there mayntenaunce touching there sustenance "of such provision as remayneth in the sayd shippe. There is one thing moor that geveth us occasion to deseyer yr Lo: "direction for that the French Kinge (as yr honors well know) "being entered into the hooly league (as they terme it) and "vowed the extirpation of all others wch are of the contrary, "there are yeat dyvers French bootes and vessells that under "pretence of transporting of passengers and other thinges "cum into or portes and creekes: wee grately suspecte and are mitche affrayed leste ther cuminge be rather to geve "intelligences and understande her Majesties proceedinges "in these p'ilous tymes. And therfor do humbly pray "yr Lordshippes dyrection heerin, where [whether] wee shall "staye them or otherwyse geve them leave in peaceable manner "to dep't. And so we humbly take our leave from farder trobling your Lo: From Torrebay the xxvij of July, 1588. "Yr Lordships to be commanded, JOHN GILBERTE. GEORGE CARY. "Mr. Carewe Rawley hathe requested us to move y' good Lo: that it would please you to get his warrant for some "six peeces of ordinances whch are in the Spanishe shippe to "be placed in her Majestyes forte or castell of Portland for "the better strength thereof, for that yor honors (as he says) hath bynne heretofor enformed of the want of artillery "whch is to be requyred for the defence of the sayd castell." The seal of this paper bears the representation of a squirrel, the crest of the Gilbert family, and the address runs thus : |