He gained the courtesy title of Lord Proby when his elder brother died in 1804.

He succeeded his father in 1828, inheriting Elton Hall in Huntingdonshire (now in Cambridgeshire).

He was commissioned into the British Army in 1794 and fought in the French Revolutionary Wars.

Carysfort was promoted to major-general in 1814, and in that year took part in the ill-fated attack on Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands.

Apart from his military career he also represented Buckingham in the House of Commons from 1805 to 1806 and Huntingdonshire from 1806 to 1807 and again from 1814 to 1818.