John Cary

John Cary (1649-1722?) was a prominent Bristol merchant and writer on matters regarding trade during the eighteenth century. Cary has been heralded as a pioneer in establishing economics as a separate field of "scientific" inquiry, a proponent of a "favorable balance of trade," and an objector to the idea that low wages were desirable. John Cary was born in Bristol, England. He was estimated to be born in March 1649 and is believed to have died sometime between 1717 and 1722, with the exact dates of his birth and death unknown. Cary was the eldest son of Mary Cary and Shershaw Cary. He descended from a family of merchants, and his father was a sugar trader in the Iberian Peninsula and West Indies. Cary also had a sixteenth-century namesake who was a merchant who traded contraband spices. While not much information is known about his formative years, he spent some of his late youth working as an apprentice to a linen draper. Cary became a merchant in 1672 and began his career dealing in goods and raw materials such as Caribbean sugar and Madeira wines. His merchant tradings led him to sail ships across the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean. By 1677, Cary joined the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers and was promoted to become a warden in 1683. In the 1690s, he was named the Society's representative based in London where he advised London city members on the state of trade in Bristol and brought up matters of concern. Cary was a devote Anglican who served as a churchwarden for parishes in Bristol. He was active in pastoral movements and cited the Bible as a key influence that provided moral and economic knowledge, especially in regards to sanctifying labor. He was against Catholicism because of his aversion to the idea of "arbitrary power" which was an association he linked with the Roman Catholic monarch, James II.