Nicholas Carew (Henry VIII courtier)

• 1. Introduction

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  Sir Nicholas Carew grew up inside the royal household, placed there at the age of six to share the education of the future King Henry VIII. For three decades he would remain one of the most recognizable figures at the Tudor court, a knight famed for his daring in the jousting lists, a diplomat trusted to negotiate with kings, and a man close enough to Henry that the King built him his own tiltyard at Greenwich by 1515. Then, on the 3rd of March 1539, Carew was beheaded at Tower Hill, convicted of high treason in a conspiracy to put a cardinal on the throne. How did a childhood companion of the King, a Knight of the Garter, end up on a scaffold? The answer runs through the ambitions of Cardinal Wolsey, the fall of Anne Boleyn, and a set of letters that Carew reportedly burned in secret at his estate in Beddington, Surrey.

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• 2. The Jousting Courtier

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  At Greenwich, Carew's fame in the jousting lists earned him a dedicated tiltyard, a privilege the King extended in recognition of his extraordinary skill and, by all accounts, his fearlessness. He was knighted sometime before 1517, and went on to accumulate a cluster of prestigious offices: Master of the Horse, Master of the Forests, Lieutenant of Ruysbank, and Chief Esquire of the King. His father, Sir Richard Carew, had served as Captain of Calais, and that connection to England's continental foothold would shape Nicholas's own career. In January 1521, he was sent to France on a diplomatic mission and was reputedly well received by King Francis I. A second mission followed in 1524, when Carew represented England at peace talks between Francis and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Francis developed a high regard for Carew and actively urged Henry to advance him at court.

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• 3. Wolsey's Target

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  Cardinal Wolsey saw in Carew exactly the kind of royal favourite who threatened his own influence, and he acted accordingly. In 1518, Wolsey managed to have Carew sent away from court, replacing him with his own protege, Richard Pace. Carew returned, only to be removed again in 1519, posted to Ruysbank Tower in Calais. The Cardinal's most decisive blow came in 1526, when the Eltham Ordinances gave him the tool to engineer Carew's dismissal from the Privy Chamber entirely. Yet by January 1528, to Wolsey's dismay, Carew was back inside the chamber. His route back may have run through a family connection: he and Anne Boleyn shared a common ancestor, Thomas Hoo, Baron Hoo and Hastings, making them distant relatives. Anne's influence at court was then at its height, and her backing may have been enough to override Wolsey's objections.

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• 4. Turning Against Anne

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  Carew had once benefited from his kinship with Anne Boleyn, but he came to resent the way she wielded her position as the King's mistress. He revealed his sympathies for Queen Katherine and the Princess Mary to the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, a channel that made his private views a matter of diplomatic record. In 1531, anger over how Anne had treated his friends Sir Henry Guildford and the Duke of Suffolk pushed him into open opposition. Those manoeuvres converged in 1536, when the reformist Thomas Cromwell forged an alliance with religious conservatives including Carew to bring the Queen down. Henry chose that same year to fulfil a promise made to Francis I, granting Carew the vacancy in the Order of the Garter. The man who had helped destroy Anne Boleyn now wore England's highest chivalric honour. The following year, after the dissolution of the monasteries, the King granted Carew the manor of Coulsdon, formerly belonging to the monastery of Chertsey.

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• 5. The Exeter Conspiracy

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  By late 1538, the alliance between Cromwell and the religious conservatives had fractured. The King forced Cromwell to move against a group known as the Exeters, and Carew, Cromwell's former ally, was caught in the sweep. Carew had already damaged himself at court by reacting angrily to an insult from the King. Then came the letters. Cromwell was presented with correspondence Carew had exchanged with the Marquis of Exeter, letters that the two men had reportedly burned at Westhorseley and Beddington to conceal their contents. The charge held that Carew, knowing the Marquis to be a traitor, had met with him at Westhorseley on the 20th of August 1537 to discuss, in the language of the indictment, "the change of the world." King Henry became convinced that Carew had been party to the Exeter Conspiracy, a plot to depose him and install Cardinal Reginald Pole on the throne. Carew stood trial on the 14th of February 1539, was found guilty of high treason, and was beheaded on the 3rd of March at Tower Hill. According to a letter by John Butler, his final words on the scaffold were a plea for all present to study the evangelical books, since he said he had fallen by hatred to the Gospel.

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• 6. Aftermath and Legacy

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  His estate at Beddington, including Carew Manor, passed first to Walter Gorges and then to Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy of Chiche. His wife, Elizabeth Bryan, was left impoverished by the attainder. The irony of her situation was compounded by the identity of one of the trial committee members: her own brother, Sir Francis Bryan. Carew's only son, Sir Francis Carew, eventually secured a reversal of his father's attainder but did not recover the family estates through that process. He purchased the Beddington estate back from Lord Darcy, and the property remained in Carew hands into the twentieth century, with two heiresses in the lineage choosing to have their sons adopt the Carew name and arms. The Coulsdon estate eventually passed through Carew's daughter Mary to his grandson Edward Darcy, whom Queen Elizabeth I granted the property in 1589 when male heirs were about to run out. Edward Darcy was knighted in 1603. Carew's daughter Anne had married the diplomat Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, and their daughter Elizabeth Throckmorton later married Sir Walter Raleigh.

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