The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Karrowe : Here again we come upon a disputed etymology. Mr. Carew, in his 'Survey of Cornwall,' tells us that "his first ancestor came out of France with William the Conqueror by the name of Karrow.

"Carew of ancient Carru was; and Carru is a plow;
Romans the Trade, Frenchmen the Worde; I do the name avow."

Karo, or Caro, is a Cornish word signifying hart or deer. Dugdale, and most other authorities, believe that the family is denominated from Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire. Sir Egerton Brydges declares that "Kari (or Carey) and Karrowe (or Carew) are derived from the castles of Kari and Carew in Somersetshire." Well may our puzzled county historian piteously cry out—"Thus God, in his providence, to check our presumptuous inquisitions and pretensions, hath wrapped all things in uncertainty, and bars us from long antiquity."

Prince, in his 'Worthies of Devon,' asserts that the name was first assumed by William de Windsor or de Carew, to whom King John, "by deed dated 1212, made a further grant of Molesford in Berkshire, reciting the former deed of King Henry I to his grandfather Gerald." This Gerald, Castellan of the Welsh castle of Carew, was the second son of Walter Fitz Other, Castellan of Windsor under the Conqueror, and ancestor of the great Irish house of Fitz Gerald. But the name was certainly borne before the thirteenth century, for, as early as 1189, Peter de Carow held a knight's fee in Oveton and Seaton—from him still named Seaton-Carew—on the coast of Durham. Leland's account, given on the authority of one of the family, is probably the most trustworthy. "The very name of Sir George Carow in the Weste Cuntrey and of his Familie, ys Montgomerick; and Carow is a Name of Honour taken upon the Name of a Barony so caullid." It is an unquestioned fact that Arnulph de Montgomery, one of the younger sons of Roger, first Earl of Shrewsbury, was the builder of Carew Castle; and it is quite in accordance with the usual practice of those times, that his descendants should have borne the name of his barony; though Camden, in his 'Remains,' gives a different explanation. "The same," he says, "holds by tradition, I know not how truly, that Arnold, or rather Adam, alias Montgomery, marrying the daughter of Carew of Molesford, his son, relinquishing his own name, left to his posterity his mother's name of Carew, from whom the Carews of Surrey, Devon, and Cornwall, are descended." At all events, as a local English name, adopted after the Conquest, it should have no place here.