Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Carpenter, Richard (1575-1627)
CARPENTER, RICHARD (1575–1627), divine, was born in Cornwall in 1575. He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 28 May 1592, and took his degrees of B.A. on 19 Feb. 1595–6, B.D. 25 June 1611, and D.D. 10 Feb. 1616–17. He was elected to a Cornish fellowship at his college on 30 June 1596, and retained it until 30 June 1606, during which time he devoted his attention, under the advice of Thomas Holland, the rector of Exeter College, to the study of theology, and became noted for his preaching powers. In 1606 he was appointed by Sir Robert Chichester to the rectories of Sherwell and Loxhore, near Barnstaple, and it has been suggested that he was the Richard Carpenter who from 1601 to 1626 held the vicarage of Collumpton. While he was a tutor at Oxford, Christopher Trevelyan, a son of John Trevelyan of Nettlecombe, Somersetshire, who married Urith, daughter of Sir John Chichester of Devonshire, was among his pupils, and through this introduction to these families Carpenter married Susanna, his pupil's youngest sister, and obtained his benefice from Sir Robert Chichester. He died on 18 Dec. 1627, and was buried in the chancel of Loxhore Church, where a monument was erected to his memory.
Carpenter's literary productions were confined to theology. He was the author of: 1. ‘A Sermon preached at the Funeral Solemnities of Sir Arthur Ackland,’ 9 Jan. 1611–12. 2. ‘A Pastoral Charge at the Triennial Visitation of the Bishop of Exon. at Barnstaple,’ 1616. 3. ‘Christ's Larum Bell of Love resounded,’ 1616. 4. ‘The Concionable Christian,’ three sermons preached before the judges of the circuit in 1620, London, 1623. His learning is highly praised by Charles Fitzgeoffry in his ‘Affaniæ,’ and two letters addressed to him by Degory Wheare in 1603 and 1621 are in the ‘Epistolæ Eucharisticæ’ subjoined to the latter's ‘Pietas erga Benefactores,’ 1628. Some verses by Carpenter are printed in the ‘Funebre Officium in memoriam Elizabethæ Angliæ reginæ’ of the university of Oxford, 1603, and in the collection (‘Pietas erga Jacobum Angliæ regem’) with which that body in the same year welcomed the new king.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 418; Boase's Reg. of Exeter Coll. pp. 52–3, 210; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. pp. 63, 1115; Trevelyan Papers, pt. iii. (Camden Soc. 1872), pp. xxvi, 77, 84, 110–12, 138–40; Arber's Stationers' Registers, iii. 496, 596, iv. 81.]