George Carew, 1st Earl of Totnes

Arms of Carew: Or, three lions passant in pale sable These were the arms shown on the seal of "Nicholas de Carreu" (c. 1255 – 1311), appended to the Barons' Letter of 1301, which he joined as "Lord of Mulesford" and which were blazoned for the same bearer in the Caerlaverock Poem or Roll of Arms of 1300, when he was present at the Siege of Caerlaverock Castle. From him are descended the Carew baronets of Antony and of Haccombe, the Earl of Totnes and Baron Carew Monument to George Carew, Earl of Totnes (d. 1629), and his wife Joyce Clopton (d. 1637) in the Clopton Chantry Chapel in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon. His funeral helm hangs from the wall above left George Carew, 1st Earl of Totnes (29 May 1555 – 27 March 1629), known as Sir George Carew between 1586 and 1605 and as The Lord Carew between 1605 and 1626, served under Elizabeth I during the Tudor conquest of Ireland and was appointed President of Munster. He was an authority on heraldry and the author of Carew's Scroll of Arms 1588, Collected from Churches in Devonshire etc., with Additions from Joseph Holland's Collection of Arms 1579.

Origins George Carew's paternal family were well known in Devonshire. His father was Dr. George Carew, Dean of Windsor. The dean was the third son of Sir Edmund Carew, Baron Carew, of Mohuns Ottery in the parish of Luppitt, Devon, and his wife Catharine Huddesfield. Catherine was co-heiress of her father Sir William Huddesfield of Shillingford St George in Devon, who was Attorney General for England and Wales to Kings Edward IV (1461–1483) and Henry VII (1485–1509).

George Carew's mother was Anne Harvey (d. 1605), In 1574, Carew entered Crown service in Ireland under his cousin, the controversial Sir Peter Carew, and in the following year volunteered in the army of the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney. In 1576, he filled the post of captain of the garrison at Leighlin for a few months, during the absence of his brother, Peter, and was appointed lieutenant governor of county Carlow and vice-constable of Leighlin castle. In 1577, he was awarded a small pension for his courageous and successful attack on the rebel Rory Oge O'More, whose forces had been menacing the castle.

Promotion In 1578, Carew was made captain in the royal navy and undertook a voyage with Sir Humphrey Gilbert. In 1579–1580, he led a regiment of Irish infantry, then a regiment of cavalry, during the Second Desmond Rebellion. On the death of his brother in the Battle of Glenmalure, from which fight he had been kept by his uncle Jacques Wingfield, he was appointed constable of Leighlin castle. Soon afterwards, he killed with his own hands several Irishmen suspected of his brother's killing and was censured by the government.

Carew was much liked by the queen, and by her principal secretary, Sir William Cecil, and his son, the future secretary, Robert Cecil. In 1582 he was appointed gentleman pensioner to the queen, and in 1583 High Sheriff of Carlow. He received his knighthood in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 24 February 1586, at the hands of his friend, Sir John Perrot, the recently appointed lord deputy. Soon after he was elected Member of Parliament for Queenborough, Carew also received large sums from the treasury to pay the queen's debts to the goldsmith George Heriot, the mercer William Stone, Elias Tillier a linen draper, and the silkman Thomas Henshawe. The Queen's secretary, William Fowler, a colleague on the Queen's Council, made Latin anagrams of his name.

In 1604, Carew was elected Member of Parliament for Hastings in the House of Commons of England. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Carew, of Clopton on 4 June 1605. In 1608 he was Master of the Ordnance. He was further honoured when he was made Earl of Totnes on 5 February 1626. and a further four at the Bodleian Library. A calendar of the former was published in six volumes between 1867 and 1873, edited by J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen, under the title Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. Carew's correspondence from Munster with Sir Robert Cecil was edited in 1864 by Sir John Maclean for the Camden Society, and his letters to Sir Thomas Roe (1615–1617) in 1860.

In the introduction to the Calendar of Carew Manuscripts the date of his birth is given as 1558, and his admission into Broadgates Hall in 1572, aged 15. In the preface to Carew's Letters to Sir Thomas Roe, it is given as 1557.

Other letters or papers are in The National Archives; among the manuscripts at the British Library; and calendared in the Historical Manuscripts Commission reports on the Marquess of Salisbury's manuscripts. Stafford published after Carew's death Pacata Hibernia, or the History of the Late Wars in Ireland (1633), the authorship of which he ascribes in his preface to Carew, but which has been attributed to Stafford himself. This was reprinted in 1810 and re-edited in 1896. A Fragment of the History of Ireland, a translation from a French version of an Irish original, and King Richard II in Ireland from the French, both by Carew, are printed in Walter Harris's Hibernica (1757). According to Anthony Wood, Carew contributed to the history of the reign of Henry V in John Speed's Chronicle. His opinion on the alarm of the Spanish invasion in 1596 has also been printed.

Marriage In May 1580, Carew married Joyce Clopton (d. 1637), the daughter and heiress of William Clopton (1538–1592) of Clopton House, near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. The marriage was without progeny. He did however leave an illegitimate son, Sir Thomas Stafford, a courtier and MP, who served under Carew in Munster.

Death and burial Carew died on 27 March 1629 at the Savoy Palace in London, when on leaving no male progeny, his titles became extinct. He was buried in the Clopton Chantry Chapel (founded by Sir Hugh Clopton (c. 1440 – 1496), a Mercer and Lord Mayor of London) in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, His widow took possession of Twickenham Meadows in Middlesex, where she lived for the rest of her life.