Robert Carey (1560-1639) was the youngest son of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain to Elizabeth I. Hunsdon was a possible bastard son of Henry VIII by Mary Boleyn, sister to the famous Anne. Thus, Robert was cousin to Queen Bess.
He was also the living embodiment of the Elizabethan gentleman-adventurer, dashing Boy's Own heroes who might have leaped from the pages of some unlikely romance. An active soldier and diplomat, Robert took part in the attempt to relieve Sluys in 1587, and in the following years served as a volunteer against the Spanish Armada. In 1591 he commanded a regiment in the Earl of Essex's expedition to Normandy in support of the Protestant Henry IV of France. He was knighted by Essex in the same year.
The queen was fond of her dashing cousin, but disapproved of his marriage to Elizabeth Trevannion. This, as Robert admitted in his memoir, was probably due to his spouse's lack of wealth:
'Not long after this I married a gentlewoman more for her worth than her wealth, for her estate was but five hundred pounds a year jointure, and she had between five and six hundred pounds in her purse.”
Robert himself was not exactly flush with cash:
'Neither did she marry me for any great wealth, for I had in all the world, but one hundred pounds a year pension out of the exchequer, and that was but during pleasure, and I was near a thousand pounds in debt; besides the Queen was mightily offended with me for marrying...'
In short, he had made a bad match. Yet the marriage was a long and happy one, and the couple prospered. Robert's wife later became a lady in waiting to Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI and I. She was also put in charge of the early training of the future Charles I, whom she taught to walk and talk.
Aside from domestic bliss, Robert's life at the Elizabethan court was one of action and public service; of embassies abroad, military service against the Dutch or French, or against the Armada, and an endless riot of masques and balls and jousts. Despite his chronic lack of funds, Robert was in his element:
'I lived in court, had small means of my friends, yet God so blessed me that I was ever able to keep company with the best; in all triumphs I was one; either at tilt, tourney or barriers; in mask or balls; I kept men and horses far above my rank, and so continued a long time'.
The queen, being a practical sort, wanted to make use of her dazzling cousin, before he drank and danced and gambled himself to death. In 1591 Carey was sent up to the turbulent Scots border, where he served as deputy Warden of the West March to his brother-in-law, Lord Scrope.
This was the era of the famous Border Reivers, criminal gangs that plagued the marches of England and Scotland. To play lawman in this hellish region – a sort of proto-Wild West – required nerves of steel and a devil-may-care attitude towards life. As such it was perfect for Carey, who had grown very bored at court. He wrote in his memoir:
'Thus, after I had passed my best time in court, and got little, I betook myself to the country, after I was past one and thirty years old, where I lived with great content; for we had a stirring world, and few days passed over my head but I was on horseback, either to prevent mischief, or to take malefactors, and bring the border in better quiet than it had been in times past'.
Robert's first act on the border, which he described with typical eloquence as 'one memorable thing of God's mercy', was to investigate a murder.
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