John Carey

Sir John Cary (or Carey) (c. 1491 – 1552), of Pleshey in Essex, was a courtier to King Henry VIII, whom he served as a Groom of the Privy Chamber, and of whom he was a third cousin, both being 4th in descent from John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (1371-1410). Origins John was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Cary of Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire, the second son of Sir William Cary (1437–1471), lord of the manor of Clovelly in North Devon and of Cockington in South Devon. Sir William Cary was beheaded after the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 and is believed to be represented by a monumental brass of a knight, without surviving identifying inscription, set into a slate ledger stone on the floor of the chancel of All Saints Church, Clovelly, next to a smaller brass, in similar style, of his eldest son and heir Robert Cary (died 1540). John's mother was Eleanor Spencer (1472–1536)), one of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Sir Robert Spencer (d. circa 1510), of Ashbury in Devon and Brompton Ralph in Somerset (not of Spencer Combe as is often stated), by his wife, Eleanor Beaufort (1431–1501), a daughter and eventual co-heiress of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (1406–1455), all three of her brothers having perished fighting for the Lancastrian cause. John's younger brother was the courtier William Cary the first husband of Mary Boleyn, sister of Queen Anne Boleyn, and ancestor to the Cary Barons Hunsdon, Barons Cary of Leppington, Earls of Monmouth, Viscounts Rochford and Earls of Dover. Eleanor Spencer's sister and co-heiress was Katherine Spencer (1477–1542), wife of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland (1477–1527), and mother to Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland.