Itinerarium. Cum historia facti Butleri, Gordon, Lesly et aliorum. Carve (Carew), Thomas: Geschichte

14 Bll., 315 S. Erste Ausgabe dieses wichtigen doch parteiischen Augenzeugenberichts aus dem Dreissigjährigem Krieg, selten (die späteren Auflagen erschienen dann in 3 Bänden). - VD17 14:018965W. - Thomas Carve (1590 - 1672). His correct name is Carue or Carew, and the Irish call him O`Corrain (Responsio veridica, 145). He himself states that Sir Ross Carew, his brother, was married to the great Clarendon`s sister, Lady Hyde, and he also boasts of his ancestor Sir Thomas Carew, who in the fifteenth century had held high authority in Munster. In many respects his sympathies were anti-Irish, and though he was skilled in the Irish language he expresses his preference for English. His early years appear to have been passed among the Butlers, to whom he says he owes everything, and it is not impossible that his boyhood may have been spent in the Ormonde family. Walter Harris, in his edition of Ware`s Writers of Ireland, asserts that Carve was educated at Oxford, but there does not seem to be any confirmation of this statement. He took priest`s orders and appears to have been stationed in the diocese of Leighlin. He left Ireland for Germany, and having stayed as chaplain for four years with Walter Butler (d. 1634), a kinsman of the Marquis of Ormonde, then serving as colonel of an Irish regiment in the army of Ferdinand II of Austria, he returned to his native country. In 1630 he again set out on his travels, and at this date his curious and valuable Itinerary was begun. He remained with Walter Butler for two years, and returned at the period of the battle of Lützen; but after a short visit to his friends in Ireland he started again for Germany in 1633. On arriving at Stuttgard about September 1634 he heard of the death of his patron Walter Butler, and he transferred his services as chaplain to Walter Devereux, formerly the chief officer and now the successor of Butler. He accompanied the army of Charles III, duke of Lorraine, in its incessant movements, and afterwards joined the main forces under Gallas. In April 1639 he finished the first part of his Itinerary, and had it printed at Mainz, with a dedication to the Marquis of Ormonde, in which he says: Not in the quiet chamber of study has it been composed, but beneath the tents of war, where my busy pen found no peace from the ominous clangour of the hoarse trumpet and the loud roll of the battle-drum; where my ear was stunned by the dreadful thunder of the cannon, and the fatal leaden hail hissed round the paper on which I was writing. In 1640 he was appointed chaplain-general of all the English, Scotch, and Irish forces, and in that capacity continued to serve with the army after the death of Devereux. It is probable that about 1643 he went to reside at Vienna in his character of notary apostolic and vicar-choral of St. Stephen`s Cathedral in that city. He brought out the third part of his Itinerary at Spires in 1646. The scarcity of this work is not its only value. It gives important details concerning Wallenstein, the civil war in England, and the general history of Christendom at the period; and all writers upon the thirty years` war who could procure a sight of it have used it, though seldom with acknowledgment. The work contains an interesting description of Ireland and a curious account of London and its buildings. Carve`s latest publication appeared at Sulzbach in 1672, when he was eighty-two years old. The date of his death is not known. All his works are extremely rare. Their titles are: 1. Itinerarium R. D. Thomæ Carve Tipperariensis, Sacellani majoris in fortissima juxta et nobilissima legione strenuissimi Domini Colonelli D. Walteri Deveroux sub Sac. Cæsar. Majestate stipendia merentis cum historiâ facti Butleri, Gordon, Lesly, et aliorum. Opera, studio, et impensis authoris, parts i. and ii., Mainz, 1639 41, 18mo; part iii., Spires, 1646, 18mo; third edition, in one vol., Mainz, 1640 1, 18mo. The third edition of the first part is the