Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/78

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Carey
72
Carey

ship of 'God save the Queen.' The first known publication of this was in the 'Harmonia Anglicana,' 1742, where it is anonymous. Carey did not include it in his 'Century.' It first became popular after his death, during the rebellion of 1746. The actor Victor describes the performance in a contemporary letter to Garrick (Victor's Letters, 1776, i. 118), and says that it was an old anthem sung in the chapel of James II when William III was expected. Arne arranged it for Drury Lane, and Burney for Covent Garden, Burney told Isaac D'Israeli that the authorship was unknown, and gives the same account of its origin as Victor (Gent. Mag. for 1814, pt. ii., p. 100). Fifty years later, Carey's son, George Saville Carey [q. v.], claimed it for his father in order to justify a request for a pension. His only authority was J. C. Smith, who told Dr. Harington of Bath, on 13 June 1705, that Henry Carey had brought it to him in order to correct the bass. Smith was the friend of Handel, and had [see above] been a collaborator with Carey (G. S. Carey, Balnea (1801), 111-15, and Gent. Mag. for 1795, p. 544). A Mr. Townshend is said to have told John Ashley of Bath, who told W. L. Bowles in 1828, that he had heard Carey sing the anthem at a tavern on occasion of Vernon's capture of Portobello in 1740 (see also Gent. Mag. for 1796, pt. ii. 1075). Some internal evidence in favour of Carey is suggested in Bowles's 'Life of Ken,' but the improbability that Carey should have left the authorship unclaimed, that his family should not have claimed it when it became so popular, and that Arne (to whom he must have been well known) and Burney should have been unable to discover the authorship at the time, seems to overbalance the small probability of the much later statements, which, moreover, if accepted, do not establish Carey's authorship. A full discussion of the authorship will be found in W. Chappell's 'Collection of National Airs,' pp. 83, 93; W. Chappell's 'Popular Music of the Olden Time,' ii. 691; and in a series of articles by W. H. Cummings in the 'Musical Times 'from March to August 1878.

Carey had a genuine vein of playful fancy, which makes his burlesques still amusing, though the admirable 'Sally in our Alley' is his best known performance. A portrait by Worsdale was engraved by Faber (1729). He was great-grandfather, by his son G. S. Carey, of Edmund Kean.

[Rees's Cyclopædia (art. 'Carey,' by Burney); Hawkins's Hist. of Music (1853), 827 (with portrait by Worsdale); Gent. Mag. for 1795, pt. ii. 544, 907, 991; 1836, pt. i. 594, pt ii. 141, 369; Notes and Queries, 1st series, vii. 95, xii. 193; 2nd series, ii. 413, vii. 64, ix. 126; 6th series, ix. 160. 180; Genest's History of the Stage, ii. 558, 559, iii. 81, 355, 468, 471, 482, 647, 585, x. 258; Biog. Dramatica; Clark's Words of Pieces ... at the Glee Club (1814); Cox's Anecdotes of J. C. Smith; Bowles's Life of Ken, ii. 288; Grove's Dict. of Music (arts. 'Carey' and 'God save the King').]

CAREY, JAMES (1845–1883), Fenian and informer, was son of Francis Carey, a bricklayer, who came from Celbridge, in Kildare, to Dublin, where his son was born in James Street in 1845. He also was a bricklayer, and for eighteen years continued in the employment of Mr. Michael Meade, builder, Dublin. He then commenced business on his own account as a builder at Denzille Street, Dublin. In this venture he was successful; he became the leading spokesman of his trade and obtained several large building contracts. During all this period Carey was engaged in a nationalist conspiracy, but to outward appearance he was one of the rising men of Dublin. It is curious to learn that at the moment when Carey was a leading spirit in the conspiracy for the emancipation of Ireland he was making money by subletting a large number of tenement houses, which he rented from his former employer and relet to the poor. Every one believed in his piety and public spirit; there was hardly a society of the popular or religious kind of which he did not become a member, and at one time he was spoken of as a possible lord mayor. In 1882 he was elected a town councillor of Dublin, not on political grounds, but, as he himself said, ‘solely for the good of the working men of the city.’ about 1861 he had joined the Fenian conspiracy, and soon after became treasurer of the ‘Irish republican brotherhood.’ This band held court-martials and passed sentences, but up to 1879 informers only were attacked. In 1881 the conspirators, one of whose sections assumed the title of the Invincibles, established their headquarters in Dublin, and Carey took an oath as one of the leaders. The object of the Invincibles was ‘to remove all tyrants from the country,’ and several attempts, but without success, were made to assassinate Earl Cowper and Mr. W. E. Forster. ‘No.1,’ the secret head of the association, then gave orders to kill Mr. Thomas Henry Burke [q. v.], the under-secretary to the lord-lieutenant, and on 6 May 1882 nine of the conspirators proceeded to the Phœnix Park, where Carey, while sitting on a jaunting-car, pointed out Mr. Burke to the others, who at once attacked and killed him with knives, and at the same time also despatched Lord Frederick