Matthew Carew

Sir Matthew Carew (* 1531 ; † before August 2, 1618 ) was an English lawyer and knight. He was one of the leading jurists of the Elizabethan age .

Origin and Studies

Matthew Carew came from the Carew family of Antony in Cornwall. He was a younger son of Sir Wymond Carew and his wife Martha Denny. His father belonged to the gentry and had made a career at the royal court. After his death in 1549, Matthew's older brother Thomas Carew became his heir. Matthew Carew attended Westminster School and studied at Trinity College , Cambridge in 1548 , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1551 . He then remained a fellow of the college. He became Archdeacon of Norfolk on condition that he should become a priest within three years . He became neither a deacon nor a priest, and although he received only minor ordinations , he apparently remained archdeacon until 1587. After studying at Cambridge, Carew went abroad with Roger Carew , who was probably his brother. He studied at the Universities of Leuven and Paris , in Dole , Padua , Bologna and finally in Siena , where he became a doctor of both rights in January 1565 .

Career as a lawyer

Back in England, Carew became rector of Sheviock in Cornwall, not far from the Antony family home in 1565 . A little later, however, he left England again and accompanied the Earl of Arundel as a translator to Italy. On his return he moved to London, where he was a lawyer at the Court of Arches in 1573 . In 1577 he became a master at the Court of Chancery . In 1589 he became an honorary barrister at Gray's Inn . As one of the oldest masters, he was knighted by James I in 1603 when he ascended the throne . In 1604 he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Surrey and Hampshire .

Carew was evidently a conscientious attorney, but he could also be impatient, pedantic, and quarrelsome. Apparently he left numerous papers from his work in the Court of Chancery to his nephew George Carew , who used them for his work Treatise of the masters in chancery . Carew had amassed a fortune of at least £ 9,600, which he largely lost to fraud before his death. He was buried on August 2, 1618 in the church of St Dunstan-in-the-West in London, where a funerary monument was erected with an inscription of his own choosing.

Marriage and offspring

Carew had married the widowed Alice Ingpenny (also Ingpen ) († 1638), a daughter of Sir John Ryvers, the Lord Mayor of London from 1573. Of her numerous children, only three survived childhood, including:

• Thomas Carew (1594-1640)

Web links

• Peter Stein: Carew, Sir Matthew (1531-1618). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NM Fuidge: CAREW, Roger (d.1590), of Hadley, Mdx, Brightlingsea, Essex and Watton, Norf.. (History of Parliament Online, Ref Volumes: 1558-1603). Retrieved June 5, 2017 .