An ancient family, the history of which however is involved in great obscurity, supposed by some to have come from Castle Cary, in Somersetshire, by others from Cary, in the parish of St. Giles's in the Heath, near Launceston. It was certainly of the latter place in the reign of Edward I.
Cockington in this county was, previous to the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, the principal seat of the family. Torr-Abbey was purchased by Sir George Cary, Knt. in 1662.
Younger branches. Cary of Follaton, in this county. In the county of Donegal and in that of Cork, and in Guernsey, there are families which claim to be branches of the House of Cary. The present Viscounts Falkland, and the extinct Barons Hunsdon, descend from the second marriage of Sir William Cary, of Cockington, in the time of Henry VII.
See Prince's Worthies, p. 196; Westcote's Devonshire Families, 507, &c.; Lysons, cxxxviii. 524; and Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, i. 129. For Cary Viscount Falkland, see The Herald and Genealogist, vol. iii.; and for Cary Baron Hunsdon, the same work, vol. iv.
Arms.—Argent, on a bend sable three roses of the first seeded proper, said to have been the arms of a Knight of Arragon, vanquished by Sir Robert Cary in single combat in the reign of Henry V.
Present Representative, Robert Shedden Sulyarde Cary, Esq.
Carew of Haccombe, Baronet 1661.
About the year 1300, by the marriage of Sir John de Carru with a coheiress of Mohun, this ancient family first became connected with the county of Devon. The Carews are descended from Gerald, son of Walter de Windsor, who lived in the reign of Henry I., which Walter was son of Otho, in the time of William the Conqueror. Haccombe was inherited from an heiress of Courtenay, and was settled on this the second branch of the family in the fifteenth century.