Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Carter, Edmund

1381648Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09 — Carter, Edmund1887Gordon Goodwin

CARTER, EDMUND (fl. 1753), topographer, was a poor disabled writing-master, who, while keeping school by St. Botolph's Church in Cambridge, conceived the design of compiling a history of the university and county, an undertaking for which he was by no means qualified. Among others whom he applied to for aid was William Cole, who treated his humble labours with contempt; but afterwards he was greatly assisted by the Rev. Robert Smyth, rector of Woodstone, near Peterborough, and occasionally by Dr. Newcome, master of St. John's College, Cambridge, who communicated some of Baker's manuscripts, and by the Rev. Robert Masters, to whom Carter used to send the whole budget of his correspondence. Carter, ‘having a small family and a bad wife,’ was forced to desert his school at Cambridge, and settled for some time during the compilation of his histories at Ware in Hertfordshire, whence he removed to Chelsea, where he taught a school as he had done at Ware. The date and place of his death are not known; his widow died in Enfield workhouse on 15 Sept. 1788 (Gent. Mag. lviii. ii. 841).

Carter was the author of 1. ‘The History of the County of Cambridge from the Earliest Account to the Present Time,’ 8vo, Cambridge, 1753 (reprinted and brought down to date by William Upcott, 8vo, London, 1819). Although badly arranged and full of errors, the book is not altogether destitute of interest. Under each parish are the particulars of the ravages committed in the churches by the wretched fanatic William Dowsing and his rabble soldiery, appointed, under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester in 1643, to destroy and abolish all the remains of popish superstition in them, a task which they performed very effectually. 2. ‘The History of the University of Cambridge from its Original to the year 1753,’ 8vo, London, 1753. In the British Museum is a copy filled with additions and corrections as for a second edition in the author's beautiful handwriting.

[Manuscript notes by Craven Ord and Dr. R. Farmer in copies of Carter's Hist. Univ. Camb. in Brit. Mus.; Gough's British Topography, i. 193, 218; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 694, v. 47, 48, vi. 112, 201.]

G. G.