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 neighbouring castles effectually prevented the Spaniards from landing in the country after their ejection. Like all contemporary English officials in Ireland, he ruthlessly drove his victory home, and the Irish peasantry of Munster were handled with the utmost rigour. As soon as Ireland was pacified, Carew sought to return to England. His health was failing, and the anxieties of his office were endless, but while Elizabeth lived his request was overlooked. On Lord Mountjoy's resignation of the lord-deputyship in May 1603, Carew was allowed to retire, and Sir Henry Brouncker was promoted to the presidency of Munster. James I on his accession treated him with marked attention. Early in October 1603 he became Queen Anne's vice-chamberlain, and a few days later (10 Oct.) the receiver-general of her revenues. He was M.P. for Hastings in the parliament which met in 1604, and appointed councillor to the queen on 9 Aug. 1604. On 4 June of the year following he was created Baron Carew of Clopton House, near Stratford-on-Avon, the property of his wife Anne, daughter of William Clopton, whom he married in 1580. On 26 June 1608 he was nominated master of the ordnance, and held the post till 5 May 1617. He was keeper of Nonsuch House and Park in 1609, of which he was reappointed keeper for life 22 May 1619, councillor of the colony of Virginia (23 May 1609), governor of Guernsey (February 1609–10), commissioner to reform the army and revenue of Ireland (1611), a privy councillor (19 July 1616), member of the important council of war to consider the question of recovering the Palatinate (21 April 1624), and treasurer-general to Queen Henrietta Maria (1626). Carew visited Ireland in 1610 to report on the condition of the country, with a view to a resettlement of Ulster, and described Ireland as improving rapidly and recovering from the disasters of the previous century. In 1618 he pleaded with James I in behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom he had lived for more than thirty years on terms of great intimacy, and Lady Carew proved a kind friend to Raleigh's family after the execution. In 1621 Carew received, jointly with Buckingham and Cranfield, a monopoly for the manufacture of gunpowder. At the funeral of James I in 1625 he was attacked with palsy, which nearly proved fatal. But he recovered sufficiently to receive a few marks of favour from Charles I, to whose friend Buckingham he had attached himself. Carew was created earl of Totnes on 5 Feb. 1625–6. In the follwing month the House of Commons, resenting the action of the council of war in levying money for the support of Mansfeld's disastrous expedition, threatened to examine each of its members individually. Totnes expressed his readiness to undergo the indignity and even to suffer imprisonment in order to shelter the king, who was really aimed at by the commons, but Charles proudly rejected Totnes's offer and prohibited any of the council from acceding to the commons' orders. The earl died on 27 March 1629 at his house in the Savoy, London, and was buried in the church of Stratford-on-Avon, near Clopton House. An elaborate monument was erected above his grave by his widow, with a long inscription detailing his military successes (, Warwickshire, 1730, ii. 686–7). He left no children. Anne Carew, whose second husband was Sir Allen Apsley, lieutenant of the Tower [q. v.], was daughter of his brother, Peter. The Earl of Totnes, whose name was often written Carey, must not be confounded with (or ) of Cockington, treasurer at war in Ireland in 1588, lord justice on Mountjoy's departure in 1603, and lord deputy of Ireland from 30 May 1603 to 3 Feb. 1603–4, who died in February 1617.

Carew had antiquarian tastes, and was the friend of Camden, Sir Robert Cotton, and Sir Thomas Bodley. Camden thanked Carew in his ‘Britannia’ for the aid he had given him in Irish matters (ed. Gibson, 1772, ii. 338). In Irish history Carew took a vivid interest. His papers inspired the detailed account of the Irish revolt (1599–1602), which was published after his death, in 1633, under the title of ‘Pacata Hibernia, or the History of the late Wars in Ireland.’ The virtual author of this book, which has often been ascribed to Carew himself, is undoubtedly Sir Thomas Stafford, reputed to be Carew's illegitimate son, who had served under Carew in Munster. Wood states that Carew also wrote the history of the reign of Henry V which is incorporated in Speed's ‘Chronicle,’ and in a volume entitled ‘Hibernica,’ published by Walter Harris in 1747, are two translations by Carew, one of a French version of an old Irish poem of the fourteenth century, ‘The History of Ireland by Maurice Regan, servant and interpreter to Dermod MacMurrough, king of Leinster,’ and the other of a French contemporary account of Richard II's visit to Ireland in 1399.

Carew carefully preserved and annotated all letters and papers relating to Ireland of his own day, and purchased numbers of ancient documents. He spent much of his leisure in constructing pedigrees of Irish families, many of which in his own hand are still extant. He bequeathed his manuscripts and books to Stafford, from whom