Family and Education

b. 18 Feb. 1766, 2nd but o. surv. s. of George, 3rd Baron Carbery [I], by 2nd w. Elizabeth, da. of Christopher Horton of Catton, Derbys. educ. Eton 1778-81; Trinity Coll. Cambridge 1784. m. 13 Aug. 1792, Susan, da. and h. of Col. Henry Watson, chief engineer, Bengal, s.p. suc. fa. as 4th Baron Carbery [I] 26 May 1783.

Offices Held

Capt. Croom cav. 1796; lt.-col. Northants. vol. cav. 1797.

Biography

Carbery was heir to encumbered Irish estates reputedly worth £15,000 p.a. at his death, but like his father lived chiefly on his English estate. He joined the Whig Club, 2 Dec. 1788, and Brooks’s, 28 Apr. 1789. Later that year his courtship of a rupee heiress was reported: ‘Lord Carbery it is said will certainly get Miss Watson, who is very pretty, and a vast fortune’. He did, and with her £6,000 p.a., at the risk of forfeiting his English estate, as well as her fortune, on default of issue. On 24 Apr. 1798 he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. In 1802 he was returned for Rutland at the instigation of the junto of the 1st Marquess of Exeter and the Noel family which held sway there: his father’s first wife had been a Noel. That year, ominously, he burst a blood vessel while out hunting.

Carbery voted with the minority for inquiry into the Prince of Wales’s finances, 4 Mar. 1803. Later that year he broke his arm, ‘which brought on a lingering complaint’. He nevertheless joined the minorities on defence which brought down Addington’s ministry, 23 and 25 Apr. 1804. He is not known to have spoken in debate. In September he was listed a supporter of Pitt’s second ministry, but with a query which was not resolved, for he died after again bursting a blood vessel, at Reddish’s hotel, 31 Dec. 1804. His childless widow’s remarriage to a cousin of his saved the Carbery inheritance.

Gent. Mag. (1804), ii. 1252; A. P. W. Malcomson, The Pursuit of the Heiress, 19-20; M. Elwin, Noels and Milbankes, 349.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes