A talented cavalry officer, he held senior positions in the Grand Alliance expeditionary force which fought in the Iberian Peninsula during the War of the Spanish Succession.[3] In 1671, Carpenter was appointed page to Ralph Montagu, Charles II's envoy to Louis XIV of France; he returned home the next year, reportedly enlisting as a private in the Royal Horse Guards.[3] There are few confirmed details of his career until 1685, when the accession of the Catholic James II of England led to the Monmouth Rebellion, and he was appointed quartermaster of an independent cavalry troop raised by the Earl of Manchester to help suppress it.[5] When James was deposed by William III in the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, Carpenter's unit served in the 1689 to 1691 Williamite War in Ireland, fighting at the Boyne in 1690 and Aughrim in 1691.[8] During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1704, Carpenter was appointed quartermaster and general of cavalry in the expeditionary force led by the Earl of Peterborough, which was sent to Spain to support the Habsburg candidate, Archduke Charles.[11] When George I succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, Carpenter was nominated Envoy to Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, but the Jacobite rising of 1715 began before he was able to take up this position.
Charles Wills
; a colleague in Spain, he and Carpenter quarrelled over credit for victory at
Preston
.