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Dudley Carleton, 1st Viscount Dorchester (1573-1632), English diplomatist, son of Antony Carleton of Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire, and of Jocosa, daughter of John Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire , was born on March 10, 1573, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. in 1600. He traveled abroad, and was returned to the parliament of 1604 as member for St. Mawes. Through his connection as secretary with the Earl of Northumberland his name was associated with the Gunpowder Plot, but after a short confinement he succeeded in clearing himself of any share in the conspiracy. In 1610 he was knighted and sent as ambassador to Venice, where he was the means of concluding the treaty of Asti. He returned in 1615, and next year was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands. The policy of England on the continent depended mainly on its relations with that state, and Carleton succeeded in improving these, in spite of his firm attitude on the subject of the Amboyna massacre, the bitter commercial disputes between the two countries, and the fatal tendency of James I to seek alliance with Spain. It was in his house at The Hague that the unfortunate Frederick V, Elector Palatine and Elizabeth of Bohemia took refuge in 1621. Carleton returned to England in 1625 with George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and was made Vice-Chamberlain of the Household and a privy councillor. Shortly afterwards he took part in an abortive mission to France in favor of the Huguenots and to inspire a league against the House of Habsburg. On his return in 1626 he found the attention of Parliament, to which he had been elected for Hastings, completely occupied with the attack upon Villiers. Carleton endeavored to defend his patron, and supported the king's violent exercise of his prerogative. It was perhaps fortunate that his further career in the Commons was cut short by his elevation in May to the peerage as Baron Carleton of Imber Court. Shortly afterwards he was dispatched on another mission to The Hague, on return from which he was created Viscount Dorchester in July 1628. He was active in forwarding the conferences between Villiers and Contarini for a peace with France on the eve of Villiers' intended departure for La Rochelle, which was prevented by the Duke's assassination. In December 1628 he was made principal Secretary of State, and died on February 15, 1632, being buried in Westminster Abbey. He was twice married, and had children, but all died in infancy and the title became extinct. Carleton was one of the ablest diplomatists of the time, and his talents would have secured greater triumphs had he not been persistently hampered by the mistaken and hesitating foreign policy of the court. His voluminous correspondence, remarkable for its clear, easy and effective style, and for the writer's grasp of the main points of policy, covers practically the whole history of foreign affairs between the period 1610-1628, and furnishes valuable material for the study of the Thirty Years' War. his letters as ambassador at The Hague, Hanuary 1616 to December 1620, were first edited by Philip Yorke, afterwards second Earl of Hardwicke, with a biographical and historical preface, in 1757; his correspondence from The Hague in 1627 by Sir Thomas Phillips in 1841; other letters are printed in the Cabala, and in T. Birch's Court and Times of James I and Charles I, but by far the greater portion remains in manuscript among the state papers.
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