THE ANCESTOR latter had by the gift of Sir Philip le Rous ^ and Lecia his wife in Northampton, Wodeford near Hinton, and Fardingston. Witn., Walter de Tekne, mayor, Adam de Cotesbrok and John de Hoche- cote, bailifFs, etc. Seal, a fleur-de-lis ; ' Si' Will' le Rous.' (Ibid. P- 74) Provision is made by Richard de la Clyve in 1356 for the saying of mass by his brother Nicholas before the altar of the Holy Cross in the church of St. Mary Shrewsbury, for the souls of their father, Thomas de la Clyve, their mother and brothers and sisters. (Ibid. P- 74)
- One of his ancestors, Ralph Carr, established a large connection
with Scotland, Holland, Norway, and North America as a merchant and general shipping agent, to which he subsequently added the busi- ness of a banker. All the copy-books of his own business letters (but not the letters of his correspondents) have been preserved, amounting to some sixty or seventy volumes, and from these, which extend from 1737 to about 1783, much may be learned with reference to the com- mercial and banking transactions of the time. He mentions in one letter the fact that the shipping trade of Newcastle exceeded that of any other provincial port in England. The chief exports to America were coals, crown glass, bottles, lead, iron, and woollen goods ; and the chief import appears to have been tar. The American correspondence of 1748-75 is contained in two separate volumes; earlier letters are scattered through the preceding general volumes, but from the former year the colonial trade began to assume special importance. The letters cease at the beginning of the War of Independence. In one of the earlier letters Carr says to a correspondent, with reference to a young man whom at the latter's request he had sent out to him as a clerk, ' There are few in England who have tolerable bread who would hire themselves to go to America.' Many of the names of the persons with whom he corresponded may doubtless have interest for families in America at the present day. Some few of these it may therefore be worth while to mention. At Boston, in 1748 and onwards, Messrs. Wendell, Ralph Inman (who continued a friend and correspondent up to his death), Edmund, Henry, and Josiah Quincy, Thomas Hutchin- son (afterwards governor of Massachusetts), William Bowdoin (who arrived at Boston in 1748), Samuel Wentworth, Samuel Douglas, with many others ; in 1764 some of the additional names are John Gould, Nath. and George Bethune, Samuel Scollay, hon. Andrew Oliver, James Griffin. At New York, 1749, Robert Commelin, John Bard, Joris BrinkerhofF, Adoniah Schuyler and Henry Cuyler, John Watts, Henry Lane, Philip Livingston ; in 1764, Walter and Samuel Franklin, Lodowick Bomper, Thomas Vardill, Jacob Sarly. Mr. Carr naturally 1 He is described as Philip le Rous, burgess of Northampton, in an earlier deed.
