Carew Monument
Sir Gawen Carew died on 25 March 1584, aged around 80, after an eventful life. He witnessed the turbulent years of the Reformation after the monasteries were pulled down and the Protestant worship he supported was imposed. He was also responsible for dealing with disorder that followed in the south west.
Gawen was unafraid of conflict, having killed an adversary in a sword fight which landed him in jail in 1538. Perhaps because of his martial prowess, the following year he was among those appointed by Henry VIII to receive the king’s fourth wife Anne of Cleves at Blackheath. Though royal promotion brought status, it also had its risks: his nephew George Carew had the bad luck of being elevated by King Henry to Vice-Admiral of the fleet, taking command of the Mary Rose on the day it sank near Portsmouth in 1545.
From this good standing Gawen became the Sheriff of Devon in 1547-48, suppressing protests against King Edward VI’s imposition of a new Protestant Prayer Book which saw major confrontations with significant casualties in Exeter and the surrounding areas. At the Battle of Fenny Bridges near Honiton, Gawen ordered the attack before being shot in the arm by an arrow. His third wife Elizabeth knew more peaceable royal service as a trusted member of the household of Queen Elizabeth I, having served her as a princess before her accession to the throne in 1558. It is likely that she met Gawen at court where he also served the queen. Later he was made Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall and Devon in 1569, and also a Justice of the Peace and Member of Parliament. He and Elizabeth lived at Sir Gawen’s family seat at Mohun’s Ottery, near Honiton.
Bishop William Alley was such an unpopular preacher that Sir Gawen stood guard in Exeter Cathedral on one occasion in the 1560s to ensure that the bishop’s sermon could take place.
Sir Gawen’s will dated 11 October 1582 requested his burial in Exeter Cathedral with instructions that as his widow, Elizabeth should erect a tomb at a cost of about £40 which was to display his arms and those of his three successive wives, including herself!
Sir Gawen’s second wife, Mary who died in 1558 is mislabelled as lying alongside him here even though she was buried in the Devon village of Kentisbeare where her tomb survives. The inscription on the panel at the top of the monument was created when it was restored by the Carew family in 1857. This inscription and another running round the cornice, which is also not original, both mislabel the monument’s lower figure.
The structure erected by Elizabeth is more elaborate than Sir Gawen’s proposal and would have cost more than the allotted £40. By the time it was completed in 1589 it had become an elaborate monument to Carew ancestry and kinship, with twenty-five shields recording marital alliances over eighteen generations, and a life-sized effigy of the family founder, Adam Montgomery de Carew, at the base.
Elizabeth died five years later, in 1594.
These details supplement information provided in the cathedral on the stand A Tudor Couple.