Fulkroy. Thanks to the prudent marriages of his forebears and his own careful management during a long life through the years when England was prospering in the domestic peace which the Tudors established, Robert Cary was not only a rich man, but in the very nature of the method of their accumulation the broad acres of his inheritance lay in separate groups scattered across Devon from Bideford Bay to the English Channel. It was not necessarily an impartible military tenement, such as the law had cherished. His manors were administered largely by stewards without constant personal supervision except in the vicinity of the seat of the lord's habitual residence. This consideration may have suggested to Robert Cary the step, as unusual in England to-day as it was in the sixteenth century, of dividing his property among all his sons, contrary to the rule of primogeniture. By so doing he might, as indeed he did, sacrifice the opportunity of political influence which in England has seemed to increase in geometrical ratio with the ownership of land; but on the other hand he could found several new families and so establish his name in his native land beyond the peradventure of the vicissitudes of a single inheritance. Robert Cary remembered how his family's lamp was twice preserved from extinction by the fact that Clovelly had been held as a separate estate.

He may

also have been influenced to his decision by the more immediate consideration of the character of his eldest son, whose offspring in the event proved themselves incapable of long maintaining the status of the family.1

But whatever were his motives, in his seventyseventh year Robert Cary took a step which lost to the family almost immediately some of its ancient manors, but to that step we may nevertheless fairly attribute the fact that Cary has been a name of dignity in Devon for as many centuries since Robert Cary as before him. This is true although his descendants do not now own a single acre of the manors he so settled upon them.2

The deed of settlement of April 12, 1535, provided for the distribution of Robert Cary's property among his sons but subject to an elaborate system of cross-entails intended to preserve the family whatever might come. The aged squire recited that already to his great costs and charges he had married John Cary, his eldest

1 There was preserved in the Carew MSS. (quoted in Collinson's Somerset, iii, 604) a good story of a similar decision in another West Country family about this same time. Sir John Rodney of Stoke Rodney had three sons, who were one day shooting at butts, when one of the younger sons gave judgment on a disputed point of the sport against the eldest and in favor of the other cadet. Whereupon the eldest threatened them both that they should repent it when he came to his land. The father overheard this and at once told his eldest son that he would make the others live without him: which he proceeded to do by dividing his property.

2 Dymond, H. & G., vi, 7.

son and heir apparent, to the daughter and heir of Edmund Deviock of Okehampton, but had not advanced any of his younger sons in any marriage, and forasmuch as they had all been loving, kind, aiding, and helping to their father he would now provide for them. So he divided his estate per stirpes.

To the oldest son, who had already acquired the Deviock manor of Kegbear1 in right of his wife, which might serve as an inheritance for the oldest grandson, he now assigned the ancestral manor of Cary as a portion for the two younger grandsons of the eldest line. To his second son, Thomas Cary, he assigned the properties on the southern coast, Cockington and Chilston. To the third son, William, he assigned Ladford and other properties in the Shebbear neighborhood. To the two younger sons, the children of his surviving wife, he assigned Clovelly with Halwill and Highauton and other property at Wyll, Sheepwash, and Monkokehampton, in the Clovelly neighborhood.

He thus budded four new branches of the family tree.

1 The Kegbear line. Of John Cary12, the eldest son of the Compostela pilgrim, we have record in his father's settlement of 1535, in the Inq. p.m., 32 Hen. VIII, No. 11, taken after his father's death, when he was "aged 38 years and more," and in the Inq. p.m., 4 Edw. VI, pt. 1, No. 37, taken after the death of his brother William of Ladford. The Visitation of Devon of 1620 shows that he had three sons and several daughters. One of the sons dying unmarried the family properties were divided between the sur

Two of them, the Kegbear and the Ladford1 branches, soon withered and died.

Unfortunately for an ancient tradition, the ancestral manor of Cary became part of the patrimony of one of the sons whose line failed. The vivors, Robert the elder taking Kegbear and Thomas taking Cary. Robert Cary 13 of Kegbear had three sons: two died unmarried, and the third, Launcelot, without issue, when what was left of his estate was divided among his sisters. See Misc. Ing. p.m., Eliz., Jas. and Chas., pt. 7, No. 189, and the will of Launcelot Cary dated October 30, 1610, in the probate records at Exeter, calendared in H. & G., vi, 10. This will confirms the recent alienation of his real estate and proceeds to dispose of personal property, "one bedstead and featherbedd p'formed," and some jewels to his wife, his "black corslet" to a friend. The inventory shows some live stock and an assortment of weapons, a corslet, a caliver, a musketflax and touchbox, an old sword, a rapier, dagger, hanger, and crossbow. It is evidently the end of a line.

1 The Ladford line. William Cary12, son of the Compostela pilgrim by his second wife, Agnes Hody, took under the settlement of 1535, as we have seen, the manor of Ladford, which had been the patrimonial estate of the Orchard family and had come to the Carys about 1422 through the marriage of Philip Cary9 with the heiress Cristina Orchard. As appears from Inq. p.m., 4 Edw. VI, pt. 1, No. 37, and the Visitation of Devon of 1620, he married Joan Herle, a daughter of his father's third wife, and died August 17, 1550, leaving two sons, Robert and William. As appears from the probate of his will (P. C. C. Drury, 18), Robert died 1589. Prince (Worthies of Devon) asserted that the line was extinct in his time, say 1697. Mr. Dymond testified in 1873 (H. & G., vi, 8) that "no evidence has yet transpired to invalidate Prince's statement.” Finally, in 1895, Colonel Vivian demonstrated (Visitations of Devon, 150) that although Robert Cary13 of Ladford had named four sons in his will, he died leaving only a daughter surviving, and was succeeded at Ladford by his younger brother William, who in turn died leaving only a daughter: that this daughter of William Cary13 of Ladford married the venerable Archdeacon William Helyar and had a son who married in 1620 a daughter of William Cary14 of Clovelly. Notwithstanding that the Ladford line was thus fully accounted for, an attempt has been made (The Cary Family in England, Boston, 1906) to identify by mere assertion the William Cary13 of Ladford with the William Cary who was mayor of Bristol in 1546. (See post, p. 494.)

descendants of John Cary of Kegbear did not have the vigor to hold their inheritance, and so it came to pass that the old hive was abandoned after thirteen generations had called it home during four hundred years. Since 1583 there has been no Cary of Cary.

The Passing of Cary of Cary. Thomas Cary 13, younger son of the eldest son of the Compostela pilgrim, who was the last Cary of Cary, is named in his grandfather's settlement of 1535 and in the Inq. p.m., 4 Edw. VI, pt. 1, No. 37, taken on the death of his uncle, William of Ladford. As shown by the Visitation of Devon of 1620, he married, like. his greatgrandfather the Liegeman of the Red Rose, a Fulford of Fulford, and by her had a daughter and seven sons.

We get glimpses of several of the sons in the State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII. Thus Peter and Richard are seen serving as men-at-arms in the garrison at Calais. The eldest, Gregory, is, however, the most interesting. He followed the sea, is recorded for his privateering achievements, and finally, as appears from Barrow's History of Discoveries, had the honor to be one of Sir Francis Drake's company in the Golden Hind on the memorable voyage around the world 1577-80, and so was doubtless the first of his race to set foot in the territory of the United States, though in California.

By reason of this multitude of sons and traces of later Carys for whom he had not accounted, Mr. Dymond (H. & G., vi, 7) questioned the Lysons statement that the line had become extinct; but Colonel Vivian (p. 151) shows from the statement of the fifth son, Henry Cary11 of Launceston (Visitation of Cornwall 1620, Harl. MS. 1162 in Publications, 1874), that all his brothers had died without issue before 1620, and from the parish register of St. Mary