Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset

Robert Carr, or Ker (r ), 1st Earl of Somerset (c. 1586, † 1645) was a Scottish politician and favorite of King James I of England.

Robert Carr, whose birthday is not known, was a younger son of Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehurst and his second wife Janet Scott, sister of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch.

He accompanied James VI. (I.) as Page to England, was then dismissed from the service of the king, and sought for some time his luck in France. When he is at a tournament in the presence of the king broke after his return to England one arm, this became aware of him again. The king was the young man who had no higher intellectual abilities, but was handsome and prepossessing of being impressed and immediately took him into his favor. 1607 he knighted him and accepted him over appropriated the Sir Walter Raleigh goods in Sherborne.

Carr's influence on the king was so great that he had even in 1610 could move to dissolve the Parliament, as this powers tried to stand against the Scottish minions. The former Page created Viscount Rochester and a member of the Privy Council ( privy councilor ) was appointed on 25 March 1611. After Salisbury's death in 1612 Carr acted as secretary to the king, who raised him on November 3, 1613 to the Earl of Somerset. On 23 December the same year Carr was promoted to Treasurer of Scotland and in 1614 even to the Lord Chamberlain. In the years 1614 and 1615 he was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

He married Frances Howard, and was involved with this in an assassination plot. Convicted, but not executed, he spent years as a prisoner in the Tower of London. After his release in 1622 he lived in retirement.