George Evans, 1st Baron Carbery

EVANS, George, 1st Baron Carbery (I) (c.1680-1749), of Caharas, co. Limerick, and Laxton, Northants.

Family and Education

b. c.1680, 1st s. of George Evans, P.C. [I], M.P. [I], of Bulgaden Hall, co. Limerick by Mary, da. of John Eyre of Eyre Court, co. Galway. m. 4 May 1703, Anne, da. of William Stafford of Blatherwycke, Northants., yr. sis. and coh. of William Stafford of Blatherwycke. cr. Baron Carbery [I] 9 May 1715; suc. fa. 1720.

According to the 1st Lord Egmont, Carbery’s grandfather was a sergeant in Cromwell’s army, who set up as a cobbler in co. Cork:

• but being a cunning, industrious and saving man, by buying army debentures and other opportunities that offered, laid the foundation of a large estate, which his son and grandson, the present lord, by parsimony have improved to near £6,000 a year.1
  

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Baron Carbery, of Carbery in the County of Cork, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was accepted in 1715 for George Evans, with remainder to the heirs male of his father and namesake George Evans, a supporter of William and Mary during the Glorious Revolution, who had earlier declined the offer of a peerage. After his elevation to the peerage in 1715, Lord Carbery represented Westbury in the House of Commons. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Baron. He also sat as Member of Parliament for Westbury. His grandson, the fourth Baron, briefly represented Rutland in Parliament. He was succeeded by his uncle, the fifth Baron. On his death the line of the eldest son of the first Baron failed. He was succeeded by his first cousin once removed, the sixth Baron, who had previously succeeded his father as second Baronet, of Castle Freke (see below). Lord Carbery sat in the House of Lords as an Irish Representative Peer from 1824 to 1845. His nephew, the eighth Baron, was an Irish Representative Peer from 1891 to 1894. As of 2012 the titles are held by the latter's great-great-grandson, the twelfth Baron, who succeeded his father in 2012. The Baronetcy, of Castle Freke in the County of Cork, was created in the Baronetage of Ireland in 1768 for John Evans-Freke, son of Grace daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Freke, 1st Baronet of West Bilney Norfolk[2] and the Hon. John Evans, younger son of the first Baron Carbery. On his death the title passed to his son, the second Baronet. In 1807 he succeeded his first cousin once removed as sixth Baron Carbery. The titles have remained united since.

Carbery saviour dies after fall - May 10, 2006

The woman who saved one of the oldest – and most eccentric – Irish aristocratic titles from extinction has died. Dublin-born Lady (Joyzelle) Carbery was 85 when she fell at her home. Despite five months extensive treatment in a London hospital for the head injury she sustained, she never recovered. She was buried at a centuries-old family plot in west Cork near the Carbery family’s Rathbarry Castle – which was the scene of the longest ever siege in Irish history. Lady Carbery is survived by her husband, the 11th Baron – whose uncle was linked to one of the most notorious murders of the last century - and the couple‘s three sons and two daughters. The family Carbery faced running out of heirs to a title that dates back to the 1700s until her marriage in 1941 to the current Lord Carbery. He is a nephew of the larger-than-life 10th Baron, who renounced his title and changed his name to John Carberry in 1920 after a row with his mother. A personal friend of Michael Collins, Carberry was a member of a notoriously debauched group of colonial ex-pat aristocrats who inspired the 1987 film White Mischief. After a colourful life that included being deported from America for bootlegging, spells in a Kenyan prison and a variety of pioneering flying exploits, the three-times married peer died in 1970 without an heir. But not only did the 11th Lord Carberry’s late wife produce three sons, one – the youngest – is now restoring the Carbery family’s two historic Cork castles at Castlefreke and Rathbarry which are among historic family property that he started buying back six years ago. In complete contrast to his predecessor, the current baron has lived a life of what one family friend described as “quiet enterprise”. His youngest son, the Hon Stephen Ralfe Evans-Freke – who runs a pharmaceutical company in America – said last night: “My mother did not like flash or trash and instead preferred people who were subtle about the way they went about their business. “She was a very private person and devoted her life to raising a family. The contrasts between the two sides of the Carbery family couldn‘t have been more marked and in many respects represent the pre and post-war changes to the aristocracy. If it wasn’t for my mother, our long family line was going to die out.” Lord Carbery, an 86-year-old World War II veteran who is currently writing a history about the family, added: “My wife was devoted to her family and pretty much had her hands full with five children, 12 grand-children and seven great-grandchildren. “Despite being treated brilliantly in hospital, she just never got over the accident. “It happened when she fell out of bed and hit her head. “She was buried in Ireland because – although she did not visit as much as she would have hoped to – we felt it was the most appropriate thing to do. “She loved the softer, more human side of Ireland and it’s where her heart was.” Also titled the 7th Baronet, Sir Peter Ralfe Harrington Evans-Freke - one of Lord Carbery’s claims to fame was helping manufacture space suits worn by the first animals sent into space and the first men to land on the moon. However it was his uncle, the 10th Baron who blazed a trail that earned the Carbery name – motto “Liberty” – considerable notoriety. During the First World War, he was a pilot with the Royal Navy Air Service and flew into battle with his own private butler. He sold the family’s Castlefreke castle in 1919 after a row with his mother over the first of his three wives – who had earlier divorced him on grounds of cruelty. Before selling the Gothic pile – which was bought back by the family three years ago – he used to fly the Irish tricolour at a time when it was illegal to do so.

An accomplished aviator who was one of the first pilots to do a loop-the-loop and fly across the English Channel, Lord Carbery was a personal friend of Michael Collins and even had a brigade of Irish

Volunteers named after him. He so despised the British that later in his life – during the Second World War – he let his personal airstrip on his Kenyan estate be used by the German Luftwaffe during World War II. A colourful character who took part in the English Channel race that inspired the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, he immigrated to America but he was kicked out by the FBI for

bootlegging and told never to come back. He settled for good in Kenya in the 1930s, where he ended up at the centre of one of the biggest murder scandals of the last century. The case inspired White Mischief, which starred Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance and which covered the debauched antics in colonial Kenya of a sexually-liberated and gin-swilling group of rich and bored ex-pat English aristocrats. They were dubbed the Happy Valley Set, because of the location where they all lived, and Lord Carbery and his third wife June were active members. They were either hosts or guests at parties where wife-swapping and drug-taking were commonplace. Heroin use was – at the time – considere “fashionable”.

White Mischief covered events around January 1941, when the body of self-styled King of Happy Valley, Josslyn Victor Hay, Earl of Erroll – a notorious philanderer – was found slumped in his car. The vehicle was discovered in a ditch and the Scottish aristocrat – who had had countless affairs with other men’s wives and girlfriends – had been shot in the head. Sir Jock Delves Broughton, the husband of a woman Erroll had been having a very public affair with, was tried and acquitted of his murder. This was despite him admitting to Lord Carbery’s 15-year-old daughter Juanita just days after the shooting that he had hidden in the back of Errol’s car while the philanderer was kissing his wife goodnight and shot him at point-blank range some time after Erroll drove off unaware his would-be murderer was crouched in the back. Lady Carbery was one of the last people to see Errol alive and was questioned by detectives.

Broughton eventually returned to England without his wife and, in 1942, committed suicide in a Liverpool hotel room. In contrast the lives of the Carberys in Kenya, the 11th earl and his wife Joyzelle – who got engaged on the dance floor of in London’s Savoy Hotel during an air raid – preferred to lead much more private and conservative lives. While he fought with the Royal Engineers in Burma during the war, she

worked as a nurse during the London Blitz. They saw each other for little more than one month during the entire war. After V-Day, they moved back to Ireland but returned to the UK in 1956 because Lord Carbery could not find any work as an engineer. Business he was involved in while a member of the London Stock Exchange included Space Equipment Ltd, which was set up to provide clothing and

other equipment for space missions. Lord Carbery recalled: “It was a brief thing really and it soon got taken over by bigger companies because there wasn’t the investment to pay for things like patents.” His son added that a special trust fund will be set up in his mother’s name. He said: “Our family has a tradition of setting up trusts in the area to benefit the less well off and there are plans to set one up in my late mother’s memory.”