Sir Robert Carr, 3rd Bt (1637-1682)

follower of Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680). Oil painting on canvas, Sir Robert Carr, 3rd Bt (1637-1682) by a follower of Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), circa 1670-1675. A three-quarter length portrait of a man, turned to the left, gazing at the spectator, standing, He has a dark brown, shoulder length wig and a slight moustache. He wears a brown cloak draped over his left shoulder. He has a white collar and a cream right sleeve. His right hand is holding a scroll and resting on balustrade. There is a dark background with columns on left. Inscribed, centre left - 'Sr. Robert Carr'. Sir Robert Carr or Carre, Kt, 3rd Bt (1636/7-1682), of Aswarby and Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the MP for Lincolnshire 1664/5 - 1681, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1672-82. Married firstly, in 1662 at Sleaford, Isabel Falkingham, “his mother’s maid, to whom he gave £1,000 that she should not claim him,” two years later, so that he could marry secondly (and bigamously?), in 1664, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Bennett of Harlington, Middlesex, and sister of Henry Bennett, 1st Earl of Arlington, by whom he had Sir Edward, 4th and last Bt (1665-1683), and Isabella (named in compliment to her aunt, Isabella van Beverweerd, Countess of Arlington), first wife of the 1st Earl of Bristol. He is buried in St Denys, Sleaford, under a fine, but plain and by then somewhat old-fashioned, table-tomb, inscribed with his details and those of his only surviving son, the 4th and last Bt. It may have been the latter's death at the age of eighteen, only thirteen months after his, that accounts for his not having been given a monument as sumptuous as those to Robert Carre (d. 1590) by Gerard Jonson the Younger, and to Sir Edward Carre, 1st Bt (d. 1618/10), and his family, by Maximilian Colt, which now flank the chancel arch (the monument would probably have been put up at the expense of his executors, including, no doubt, his son-in-law, John Hervey, later 1st Earl of Bristol. Ickworth, Suffolk (Accredited Museum)