Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a contemporary of the future courtier, poet and soldier Sir Philip Sidney and the antiquarian William Camden who is best known for ‘Britannia’, the first regional study of the entire country of  Great Britain and Ireland.

From a respectable family, Carew married into huge wealth through his marriage to Juliana Arundell of Trerice (pictured left) and became a man of leisure and politics. 

He translated Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem Delivered’, a version of the history of the First Crusade which apparently bears little relation to fact.

He also served as High Sheriff of Cornwall (1583 and 1586) and as Member of Parliament for Saltash (1584), replacing his father, Thomas Carew, who also only served for one session.