Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/198

 College, Oxford, 8 July 1698, and took his degree of B.A. in 1702. Afterwards he was incorporated at Cambridge, and took his M.A. degree from King's College in 1706. Shortly afterwards he took holy orders, and was appointed reader at the abbey church, Bath, in 1707. In 1712 he is said to have made the tour of Europe, as tutor to a nobleman. He was a strong Jacobite, and his opinions involved him in more than one controversy, and on several occasions got him into trouble with the government. The first of these controversies arose from a sermon preached by him at the abbey church, Bath (when he was reader), on 30 Jan. 1713–14; he then defended Charles I from the common charge of having secretly instigated the Irish rebellion and massacre of 1641. For this he was attacked by Henry Chandler (or Chaundler), father of Samuel Chandler [q. v.], who was a dissenting minister at Bath. Carte's reply was published in May 1714, with the title: ‘The Irish Massacre set in a Clear Light;’ it is reprinted in the ‘Somers Tracts,’ iii. 369. Carte, refusing to take the oaths to George I, adopted a lay habit. At the Jacobite rising of 1715 he appears to have been suspected by the government. He concealed himself in the house of a Mr. Badger, curate of Coleshill, and does not seem to have been molested there, for he acted occasionally at Coleshill as a clergyman. His continued connection with the Jacobite party is shown by his intimacy with Atterbury, to whom he is said to have acted as secretary. In his defence before the House of Lords Atterbury denied having seen him, ‘except very rarely, for two or three years past.’ But the bishop had crossed out this passage in the draft of his speech, and he acknowledges that he obtained a living for his brother, John Carte, from the chapter of Westminster (, Correspondence of Atterbury, ii. 140). Atterbury was committed to the Tower 24 Aug. 1722, and in the gazette of the 15th of the same month a proclamation appeared, offering a reward of 1,000l. for Carte's apprehension, in which he was described as ‘about thirty-two years of age, of a middle stature, a raw-boned man, goes a little stooping, a sallow complexion, with a full grey or blue eye, his eyelids fair, inclining to red, and commonly wears a light-coloured peruke.’ The description, however, was declared by Dr. Rawlinson, who knew him, to be quite opposite to the truth. Meanwhile, Carte had escaped to France, where he lived under the name of Phillips, and gaining access to the best libraries, he devoted himself to collecting materials for illustrating a translation of the ‘History of Thuanus’ (de Thou). These materials were purchased in 1724 at a considerable price by Dr. Mead for the edition of ‘Thuanus’ published at his expense in London, in seven folio volumes, in 1733, under the editorship of S. Buckley, and with a Latin address to Mead signed by Carte, who appears also to have made the index for the book. In 1728 Carte was allowed to return to England on the intercession of Queen Caroline. He now devoted himself to an expansion of his early pamphlet, in vindication of Charles I, in regard to the Irish rebellion. This he did in his ‘Life of James, Duke of Ormonde,’ in 2 vols. fol., 1736, preceded by a third volume in the previous year, containing a collection of original letters of Wentworth, Ormonde, and others connected with Ireland. He labours to prove that the pretended commission given by Charles at Oxford (12 Jan. 1644–5) to Lord Glamorgan (Lord Herbert) for treating with the Irish catholics, was a forgery of Glamorgan's. The book is still of value from the mass of materials which his diligence collected. Yet Dr. Johnson's criticism must be allowed to have some justification: ‘The matter is diffused in too many words; there is no animation, no compression, no vigour. Two good volumes in duodecimo might be made out of two in folio’ (, Boswell, v. 24, ed. 1859). In a letter to Swift, dated 11 Aug. 1736, on sending him his ‘Ormonde,’ Carte sketches his plan for his other voluminous work, ‘The History of England.’ He complains that Rapin had had no knowledge of the documentary sources of English history beyond those published in Rymer's ‘Fœdera;’ that the Cottonian MSS., the rolls of parliament, and the contents of the Paper Office had been quite neglected by him, and that therefore there was room for a history founded on the study of these. In the midst of his work at this history he had to take action against some Dublin booksellers who were pirating his ‘Life of Ormonde.’ He found that the only way he had of defeating them was to serve upon them an order of the House of Lords, which had been passed in 1721 in regard to Curll's printing the ‘Life and Works of the Duke of Buckingham,’ declaring it a breach of the privileges of the house for any one to print an account of the life, the letters, or other works of a deceased peer without the consent of his heirs or executors. This served Carte's immediate purpose, but he exerted himself to obtain a new act of parliament securing an author a property in his works, and in 1737 published ‘Further Reasons addressed to Parliament for rendering more effectual an Act of Queen Anne relating to Vesting in Authors the Rights