Nicholas Carew

Notes:

Knight of the shire for Surrey. Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex 1440-41, 1444-45, 1448-49. He probably fought on the Lancastrian side at the first battle of St. Albans, 1455.

Family/Spouse: Margaret Fiennes. Margaret (daughter of Roger Fiennes and Elizabeth Holand) died after 20 Apr 1458; was buried in Chapel of St. Nichols, St. Mary's, Beddington, Surrey, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

James married Eleanor Hoo about 1468. Eleanor (daughter of Thomas Hoo and Eleanor Welles) was born about 1449. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He was made a knight banneret by Henry VII after the battle of Blackheath, 1497.

Family/Spouse: Malyn Oxenbridge. Malyn (daughter of Robert Oxenbridge and Anne Lyvelode) died on 3 Oct 1544. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Beddington, Surrey, England

Notes:

Nicholas Carew was a courtier and diplomat, knight of the shire for Surrey, sheriff of Surrey and Sussex 1518-19, and Master of the Horse to Henry VIII. A close friend and rousting partner of the king's for many years, he was eventually brought down by Thomas Cromwell. Accused and convicted of having been part of the Exeter Conspiracy, he was attainted and executed at Tower Hill on 3 Mar 1540. One of the jurors who convicted him was his wife's brother Francis Bryan, rake, libertine, trimmer, close friend of Henry VIII, remembered to history, for his efficient lack of any perceptible principle, as the "Vicar of Hell."

Nicholas married Elizabeth Bryan in Dec 1514. Elizabeth (daughter of Thomas Bryan and Margaret Bourchier) died between 21 May 1546 and 17 Jul 1546; was buried in St. Botolph's, Aldgate, London, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Arthur Darcy and Mary Carew were both descendants of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, he as a 6Xgreat-grandson and she as a 5Xgreat-granddaughter. By those descents they were, to one another, sixth cousins once removed. But in fact they were slightly more closely related than that: fifth cousins once removed by shared descent from Ralph de Greystoke and Katherine Clifford, and fifth cousins twice removed by shared descent from John de Welle and Maud de Ros.

Family/Spouse: Arthur Darcy. Arthur (son of Thomas Darcy and Dowsabel Tempest) was born in of Brimham, Yorkshire, England; died on 3 Apr 1561; was buried in St. Botolph's, Aldgate, London, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Katherine Tyrwhit. Katherine (daughter of Robert Tyrwhit and Elizabeth Oxenbridge) died in 1567. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Elizabeth Conyers. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Edward Darcy was Groom of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth I, 1583-1603. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1561, and was admitted at the Inner Temple in Nov 1561. Special ambassador to Francis, Duke of Anjou and William of Orange in 1583. Burgess (M.P.) for Truro, Cornwall, in 1584; justice of the peace in Kent from 1604 to his death.

His lifelong cupidity appears to have been notable even by the standards of Elizabethan court society. From his entry in the History of Parliament: "In 1594 the attorney-general protested at the nomination of one Wiseman to the post of clerk of the outlawries, after Darcy had virtually put up the office for auction, and in 1600 the widow of Edward Denny petitioned against Darcy's attempt to obtain part of the proceeds of the sale of her late husband's office. He had little need, she wrote, 'to suck this small portion of her Majesty's favour from the hungry mouths of my children'. [...] His patent for searching and sealing leather, which he was granted in 1592 (or 1593), led him to commit 'such exactions and outrages as disquieted all England', and his privileges were first reduced (in 1595) and then (before May 1598) replaced by a new patent for the monopoly of importing and manufacturing playing cards." Sometime between then and 1602, Darcy sued Thomas Allin (also spelled Allain, Allein, Allen, etc.), haberdasher of London, for infringing on his playing-card patent. In what came to be regarded as a landmark case in English law, known to history as the "Case of Monopolies," the King's Bench ultimately ruled against Darcy, declaring his patent void because monopolies are ultimately damaging to the public good. The arguments set forth in the verdict were later much quoted in the various deliberations leading to the creation of modern antitrust and competition law.

His loss in court can't have broken his stride too badly; he was knighted the next year, on 23 Apr 1603, and retired to live the comfortable life of a wealthy man.

——

Edward Darcy (1543-1612) = Elizabeth Astley
Robert Darcy = Grace Reddish
Edward Darcy = Elizabeth Stanhope [1]
Katherine Darcy (d. 1713) = Erasmus Phillips (d. 1697) [2] [3]
Elizabeth Phillips (b. abt 1664) = John Shorter [4]
Catherine Shorter (1682-1737) = Robert Walpole (1676-1745) [5]
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

[1] Daughter of Philip Stanhope, 1st Earl of Chesterfield.

[2] Erasmus Phillips and Katherine Darcy were parents of Sir John Phillips of Pembrokeshire, a leading Welsh social and religious reformer.

[3] Through his mother, Elizabeth Dryden, Erasmus Phillips was a first cousin of the poet John Dryden, a second cousin once removed to Jonathan Swift, and a first cousin once removed to Mrs. Ann Marbury Hutchinson, the antinomian religious reformer who was famously cast out of the early Massachusetts Bay colony.

[4] John Shorter was a son of John Shorter (1625-1688), Lord Mayor of London.

[5] Robert Walpole is generally considered to have been the first Prime Minister of England in the modern sense.

——

Edward Darcy (1543-1612) = Elizabeth Astley
Catherine Darcy (1581-1646) = William West (b. 1575)
Elizabeth West (1606-1669) = Francis Vane (1617-1680)
Francis Vane (1643-1691) = Hannah Rushworth (1646-1705)
Henry Vane (1669-1726) = Anne Scrope (1673-1721)
Thomas Fane (1701-1871) = Elizabeth Swymmer (1708-1782)
Mary Fane (1739-1809)= Charles Blair (b. 1735)
Charles Blair (1776-1820)
Thomas Richard Arthur Blair (1802-1867) = Frances Catherine Hare (1823-1867)
Richard Walmesley Blair (1857-1939) = Ida Mabel Limouzin (1875-1943)
Eric Blair (George Orwell) (1903-1950)

Family/Spouse: Elizabeth Astley. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef 1631

Family/Spouse: Grace Reddish. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1669, London, England

Notes:

Her second husband was the Rev. Sydrach Simpson, Master of Pembroke Hall at the University of Cambridge.

Isabella married John Launce about 1619. John (son of Robert Launce and Susan Tubb) was born about 1597 in of Penair in St. Clement, Cornwall, England; died before 25 Jun 1635; was buried on 25 Jun 1635 in St. Clement, Cornwall, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Newhall, Derbyshire, England

Edward married Elizabeth Stanhope after 1634. Elizabeth (daughter of Philip Stanhope) died about 1683. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

One of AP's two proven gateway ancestors.

Cotton Mather, in Magnalia Christi Americana, called Mary Launce, second wife of the Rev. John Sherman, a "young gentlewoman [...] a Person of good Education, and Reputation, and honorably descended," whose mother was "daughter to the Lord Darcy, who was Earl of Rivers." She certainly was not, and in his pioneering 1860-64 Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, James Savage took delight at exercising his well-known animus against Mather, who "tells of this wife calling her mother daughter of Darcy, Earl Rivers, one of the Popish Counsellors of Charles I who had no daughter that married a Launce." Savage continues: "If [Mary Launce Sherman] did give [her husband] these myths of her noble descent [...] either she was insane, which he had not sanity enough to discover, or she was irreverently playing on his bottomless credulity." It was left to the great Donald Lines Jacobus, founder of the twentieth-century "Jacobus School" of skeptical, fact-based genealogy, to point out, in a 1944 article, "The Family of Rev. John Sherman" (citation details below), that Mary Launce's mother really was a Darcy, albeit one of the Darcy family of Kent. Isabella Darcy of London, daughter of Sir Edward Darcy, a confidant and ally of Elizabeth I, first married John Launce of Cornwall and, secondly, the Rev. Sydrach Simpson, master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge University. Her 1668 will names, with others, her sons James Launce and Darcy Launce, and her daughter Mary Sherman. In a subsequent article, "The Darcy Ancestry of Mrs. John Sherman" (citation details below), Jacobus put forth further proofs of Mary Launce's parentage, calling it a "perfect chain of evidence" and remarking that "Few English lines of early colonists are so thoroughly proved."

Descendants of the Rev. John Sherman and Mary Launce include Norman Rockwell, Declaration of Independence signer Robert Treat Paine, and the 68th governor of Massachusetts, William Weld.

Regarding the date of her death, the Early New England Families Study Project (citation details below) states only that she "[d]ied probably at Watertown between 15 October 1705 and 24 December 1712. She was living on 20 October 1704, when she acknowledged a deed." But Watertown records (citation details below) clearly state "m^s Mary Sherman (widow of mr. John Sherman Late: R^d: pastor of the church in watertown) deceas^t march : 9 : 1709/10".

Mary married Rev. John Sherman about 1647. John (son of Edmund Sherman and Grace Makin) was born on 26 Dec 1613 in Dedham, Essex, England; was christened on 4 Jan 1614 in Dedham, Essex, England; died on 8 Aug 1685 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts; was buried in East Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]