RAINBOROWE, Thomas (d.1648), of Wapping, Mdx.

There has been much speculation by historians as to the origins of the Rainborowe family, including an unfounded suggestion that an ancestor of Thomas Rainborowe was a Bavarian or Dutch Protestant immigrant. It seems safer to be satisfied with the circumstantial evidence that the Rainborowes were located in Suffolk by the mid-sixteenth century, perhaps having roots in the parish of Ashbocking, ten miles from Ipswich.21Peacock, ‘Notes’, 9; Stent, thesis, 10. The hostile reporter of 1648 who referred to Rainborowe as a ‘skipper of Lin [King’s Lynn]’ may have known about this ancestry.22A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648), 6 (E.458.12). Thomas Rainborowe, the MP’s grandfather, has been identified as a mariner having a leasehold estate in Essex, who lived at Greenwich, and was presumably the man of that name buried in February 1592 at Whitechapel, until 1617 the church serving Wapping. If this is the case, the grandfather’s association with the sea and with Wapping was to continue for two further generations of his family. William Rainborowe, this MP’s father and himself a Member, was ‘an eminent commander at sea’, who had commanded the fleet against north African pirates in 1637. 23Clarendon, Hist. iv. 331. He declined a knighthood after his service, but accepted £300 in the form of a medal and gold chain. He sat for Aldeburgh in the Long Parliament until his death in February 1642.24Peacock, ‘Notes’, 11; ‘William Rainborowe’ infra; St John, Wapping par. reg. At least two of his sons were mariners. William was a sea-captain and trader who emigrated to New England in 1639, and then returned in 1642 to participate in the naval expedition to Ireland and subsequently to take a commission as captain in the life guards of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.25Stent, thesis, 16; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 175.

The siblings of Thomas Rainborowe, who spelled his surname thus, were born in Wapping.26Signature: SP28/30 Part v, f. 461; Bodl. Tanner 58 (ii), f. 707. It seems highly likely that he was, too, although no record survives of his baptism. A gap in the recorded baptisms between 1619 and 1621 in the parish register at Whitechapel, where his brothers and sisters were baptized, may provide the explanation for this.27St John, Wapping par. reg. His two sisters, Martha and Judith, later married into the Winthrop family of Massachusetts, strengthening transatlantic family ties already forged by William Rainborowe’s emigration.28Stent, thesis, 17. Nothing of substance is known of the early life of Thomas Rainborowe, but Edward Hyde’s* comment that he had been ‘bred at sea’ seems highly plausible.29Clarendon, Hist. iv. 331. Another clue is contained in the description of him in the lists of those sailing to Ireland in June 1642 as ‘Zant-man’. Zante (Zakynthos in the Ionian Islands) was a destination of the Turkey Company, whose members traded there for currants; just the kind of market upon which interloping merchants, some as merchant mariners, were encroaching.30A True Relation of the Passages of God’s Providences (1642), 4; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 25, 27, 63. By the 1640s, the family was marked by a number of features often associated with radical Protestantism: London residence, New England connections and commercial activity.

Naval commander and senior army officer, 1642-6

If Thomas Rainborowe was born around 1619, he was 23 at the most when he appears first in the public sphere, as commissioner and ‘vice-admiral’ of the expedition to Ireland in June 1642 to combat the rebels there. The venture was under the direction of a group of radical Protestants, London ‘interloping’ merchants like Maurice Thomson and Samuel Moyer; and aristocrats with affinities for New England, such as 2nd Baron Brooke (Robert Greville†) and Viscount Saye and Sele (William Fiennes).31A. and O i. 9-12; A True Relation of Passages, passim; Stent, thesis, 21. Rainborowe was in charge of the naval arrangements, and landed troops at Baltimore, Co. Cork, where he mustered them.32A True Relation of the Passages, 10-11. In May 1643 he petitioned Parliament to try to recover funds advanced by him in its service while in Ireland.33CJ iii. 68a.

His naval prowess was appreciated by Parliament, which gave him command of Swallow, a ship with a complement of 1,500 men and 34 guns, during the summer guard, 1643.34Penn, Memorials, i, 66. He was an energetic commander, and again came to the attention of the Commons as a captor of Scots and Irish sailors.35CJ iii. 137a. He disembarked 100 men to assist Sir Thomas Fairfax*, besieged in Hull by the earl of Newcastle (William Cavendish†), and managed to lift the siege (12 Oct. 1643), amid commendations of his personal bravery. He was given the rank of colonel at Hull, and came under the authority of the earl of Essex there.36HMC 4th Rep. 568; HMC Portland, i. 138-9. By November of that year, however, he himself had been captured by Newcastle and was exchanged for a royalist naval commander imprisoned in the Tower of London.37CJ iii. 302a. It seems unlikely that he was the Captain Rainborowe reported to be in Cornwall in 1644 – this was more probably his brother, William – and his next reported military engagement was at Crowland Abbey, in the fens of Lincolnshire.38Symonds, Diary, 73. Here, under the command of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), his task was to conduct a siege of a flooded area, using ordnance mounted in longboats to reduce the royalist garrison. On 10 December, the garrison surrendered, and commentators appreciated Rainborowe’s role in preventing the place becoming ‘a kind of scurvy Dunkirk to the Parliament’.39Vicars, The Burning Bush, 76; Peacock, ‘Notes’, 14. It has been noted that at least four of his fellow regimental officers at this time had New England backgrounds.40Stent, thesis, 28.

On the formation of the New Model army in March 1645, Rainborowe was given the colonelcy of the 7th regiment of foot; his old Lincolnshire regiment was retained for local duties and not incorporated.41Temple, ‘Original Officer List’, 58; CJ iv. 108; Stent, thesis, 38. The Lords objected to his command, however, as they did to the appointment of other radical officers.42Temple, ‘Original Officer List’, passim. Rainborowe’s radicalism at this time appears to have been that of other radical Protestants of the type formerly associated with Lord Brooke, and others with an interest in New England. A commentator giving evidence in 1644 on the quarrel between Manchester and Oliver Cromwell* asserted that Rainborowe had been identifiable as an Independent from early in 1643.43Manchester Quarrel, 72. The peers’ objections were overcome, and Rainborowe’s first engagement of note with his new regiment was at Gaunt House, near Standlake, Oxfordshire, in May 1645.44Whitelocke, Memorials, 38. This was another siege, a military operation in which Rainborowe was by this time greatly experienced. The royalists in the house surrendered on 31 May.45J. Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva (1854), 25; Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 79. Rainborowe was at Naseby (14 June), but his regiment was in reserve, and so he played no major part in the battle.46Stent, thesis, 43. From Northamptonshire, his regiment marched first to Leicester, where Rainborowe was a commissioner for the parliamentarian army on the articles for the town’s surrender; and then west to begin the reduction of western England.

By 10 July Rainborowe was with Fairfax camped before Ilminster, where he was joined by Oliver Cromwell.47Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 54; Moderate Intelligencer no. 20 (10-17 July 1647), 157-8 (E.293.6). His regiment was augmented by the Committee of Both Kingdoms with 300 recruits, suggesting that his standing with the Independent-dominated committee was high. In fact, with a budget of £1,000 he delivered 1,457 recruits for less than half that sum.48CSP Dom. 1645-1647, p. 6; SP28/34 f. 365. Other engagements in which Rainborowe fought during the summer of 1645 were Bridgwater (19 July), Sherborne (6 Aug.), where his regiment suffered casualties from snipers, and Nunney Castle (20 Aug.).49Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 77, 91, 98. In September he played a leading part in the reduction of Bristol, the city of greatest economic importance in the west. Rainborowe commanded five regiments there, among them his own and those of Philip Skippon* and John Birch*, and with this brigade of 6,000 men stormed the city from the River Frome side, successfully and with minimal losses. Once more he acted as a commissioner for the articles of surrender.50A True Relation of the Storming of Bristol (1645), 18, 24 (E.301.5); Vicars, Burning Bush Not Consumed, 265; Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 120; HMC Portland, i. 268; Peacock, ‘Notes’, 16.

Rainborowe invested a number of other towns and castles in the west of England after the fall of Bristol. As the army’s leading expert on sieges, he was at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, in an 11 days’ siege, and joined Fairfax before Warminster and Corfe Castle.51Peacock, ‘Notes’, 16-17. In October his brigade was at Basing House.52Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 125. Early in 1646, his regiment was wintering at Abingdon, having been despatched there in December 1645 to join the regiment of Edward Whalley*. During this period of military inactivity he visited King’s Lynn to stand as a candidate in the recruiter election there. He was worsted by the townsman Edmund Hudson*, whom he accused immediately after the election of sharp practice at the hustings.53A Diary or Exact Journal no. 5 (18-25 Feb. 1646), 5-6 (E.325.6). Returning to his regiment, he took Abingdon in March, and subsequently quartered in various places around Oxford, the next target of the parliamentarian forces.54CSP Dom. 1645-1647, pp. 263, 269-70, 341; Vicars, Burning Bush Not Consumed, 376; HMC Portland i. 353; Stent, thesis, 55.

Rainborowe was evidently on good terms with John Corbett*, who chaired a Commons’ committee for examinations, whom he asked to intervene in his interests in the House of Commons in April 1646.55Peacock, ‘Notes’, 18. More importantly for his developing political profile, he now found himself quartered in the most politically sensitive area in the kingdom, outside the headquarters of the king and his council. Later that month, Rainborowe and Charles Fleetwood* advised the Speaker that the royalist secretary of state, Edward Nicholas†, had requested passes from Rainborowe for the king’s leading advisers, including Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey and Henry Wriothesley, 2nd and 4th earl of Southampton, to treat about the surrender of Woodstock. They were willing to negotiate the passage of the king into the hands of the army, on condition that his person remained unharmed and that he should continue as sovereign.56Bodl. Tanner 59 (i), 89; Ashburnham, Narrative, ii. 69-70; CCSP i. 314; CJ iv. 523-4; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 192. The Commons rewarded the messenger, John Disbrowe*, for his part in the surrender of Woodstock, but disapproved of the principle that the king should make addresses to the army. Such addresses were ‘indirect, and ... hinder the proceedings of the Parliament for peace in a right way, and may administer occasions of ill designs against the Parliament and their army’. It read like a rebuke to Rainborowe, since it could hardly have been intended for the king.57CJ iv. 523a-524b. The overtures by the royalists turned out to be a feint, and on 28 April Rainborowe was reporting to Parliament that the king’s attendants had surrendered to him. In fact, Charles had escaped from Oxford. There is a suggestion that the discussions of Rainborowe and the scholar, Hudson, early in April, were conducted in bad faith by the royalists, since it was Hudson who led Charles safely through the lines of the parliamentarian army, to escape from the city.58Clarendon, Hist. iv. 192; CJ iv. 527a; OPH xiv. 376. It may have been because of some blame thought to attach to Rainborowe in this episode that he did not act as a commissioner for the surrender of Oxford.59Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 278; Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 258, 262.

On 13 May Whalley was at Banbury, but by the 20th he was before Worcester, to conduct the siege of the city. Rainborowe’s regiment had been left at Oxford. For four weeks, Whalley engaged in a protracted series of exchanges with Henry Washington, the royalist garrison commander there. He was evidently happy to involve the Worcestershire county committee, based at Evesham, to play an equal part with him in the parleying. Sir Thomas Rous* was the leader of negotiations for the committee, joined at the end of June by Nicholas Lechmere*.60Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 211-7, 226, 229, 234-5. It was being reported on 30 May that Rainborowe was to march to Worcester, and on 3 June he was said to be there, but in the event he did not appear there until 8 July.61The Gallant Siege of the Parliaments Forces before Ragland Castle (1646), 3 (E.339.9); Mercurius Civicus no. 157 (28 May-4 June 1646), 2248 (E.339.17); Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 248. From the point of view of those besieged, Rainborowe’s arrival at Worcester with 2,000 foot, and his displacing Whalley as director of the siege, was welcome. An antipathy had developed between the royalists and Whalley, which arose partly from his bombardment of the town, and partly through his indulgence towards the disliked county committee. Informal discussions between junior officers of both sides raised the suspicion that Whalley and the committee had intercepted letters sent to the garrison by Fairfax.62Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 255. Washington said of Rainborowe that he was ‘glad to deal with a gentleman who knew how to return civilities. As for Col. Whalley he could have none from him.’63Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 248.

Rainborowe’s arrival marked a change in the manner in which the siege was conducted. Drawing upon his great experience of similar enterprises, Rainborowe seems to have been relaxed in his approach to those inside the city, refraining from direct military action, and sidelining the county committee. The explanation he provided the royalists for Whalley’s removal was that he had exceeded his authority in bombarding Worcester and by treating with them.64Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 254. The gloss of the anti-Independent commentator Thomas Edwards after these events was that Whalley had done all the work at Worcester, but that the Independents sent Rainborowe, one of themselves, along to take the credit for the ending of the siege.65T. Edwards, The Third Part of Gangraena (1646), 132, 136, 138. This was also the view of Richard Baxter, and Col. Edward Wogan attributed Whalley’s displacement to a ‘black list’ of Presbyterians presented by Independents to Cromwell without the knowledge of Fairfax.66Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 55-6; Clarke Pprs. i. 424. Certainly Whalley at this time was a Presbyterian, an associate of Rous, the other committeemen and divines like Richard Baxter, his chaplain. Equally certainly, Rainborowe’s conduct of the siege involved no more force or resolution than Whalley’s had done, although he was more experienced at siege craft than the latter; and he delivered a snub to the county committee. Edwards’s allegation of a plot on the part of the army command was informed speculation, but once Rainborowe was at Worcester, a split between Presbyterians and Independents followed.

Military governor and Member for Droitwich, 1646-7

Rainborowe entered Worcester on 23 July 1646, accompanied by Thomas Edwards’s bête noire, the Independent preacher, Hugh Peter, and was made governor of the city.67Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 262; Bodl. Tanner 59 (ii), 44. That he was an active, or at least resident, governor may be deduced from gifts presented him by the city chamber.68Worcs. Archives, Worcester city mss, shelf A10, box 3, city acct. bk. 1640-69, n.p., 1646. He was in London in September 1646, returning on the 27th. On 15 January he was reported as elected MP for Droitwich with Edmund Wylde. Wylde was a relative of Serjeant John Wylde*, a property owner in Worcester and from 1640, recorder there.69Perfect Occurrences no. 3 (15-22 Jan. 1647), 18 (E.372.3); Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 337. The election of both men must be attributed to John Wylde, whose power in Droitwich was quite unrivalled. On 24 February Rainborowe took the Covenant in the House, on 1 March was writing to Sandwich borough from Deal Castle, but on 12 March was given leave to return to the country, almost certainly to Worcester, where the chamber gave him gifts of wine and sugar that same month.70CJ v. 97a, 110a; Cent. Kent. Studs. Sa/C4, unbound letters; Worcs. Archives, Worcester city acct. bk. 1640-69, n.p., 1647. On 23 April he was back in the Commons, named to a committee with 37 others to consider two ‘obnoxious’ books which were evidently intended to inflame the soldiery against Parliament.71CJ v. 153a. On the 26th he was ordered by Fairfax to rejoin his regiment to suppress disorder in Hampshire and await orders to sail to Jersey.72Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer no. 206 (20-27 Apr. 1647), 507 (E.385.6) His regiment was apparently represented at Saffron Walden, when at least seven colonels, including Whalley, supported a petition to the House of Commons requesting indemnity, arrears of pay and a lifting of the Commons order that regiments should be compulsorily shipped to Ireland. Rainborowe’s name was not attached to the petition, because he was a considerable distance from Saffron Walden when it was framed.73The Petition and Vindication of the Officers of the Armie (1647) (E.385.19).

Evidently there was discontent in Rainborowe’s regiment at this time, as he himself informed the Speaker.74Bodl. Tanner 58 (i), 125. Furthermore, there was a disagreement between the Lords and the Commons over the wisdom of his commission to reduce Jersey to the control of Parliament.75CJ v. 159a; LJ ix. 180b. Rainborowe had the support of the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports and the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs, but the dispute with the Lords dragged on throughout May 1647, and other officers had to be despatched to Hampshire, where his regiment quartered, to reassure the populace that the soldiers would soon be on their way.76Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer no. 207 (27 Apr.-4 May, 1647), 516 (E.385.20); CJ v. 163a, 168b, 169a, 183b, 184a. On 28 May he finally received clearance to join his regiment, which had moved back to Abingdon, its quarters before the advance to Worcester the previous year. Denzil Holles* believed that Rainborowe had deliberately allowed the discontent in his regiment to fester; but the royalist newspaper report, that Rainborowe told the Commons that his representations to them over the past three months on behalf of his soldiers had been ignored and that their removing to Abingdon without permission was the inevitable consequence, seems more plausible.77‘Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Holles’ in Maseres, Select Tracts, 345-6; Clarke Pprs. i. 105. Certainly the correspondence of the agitators on 28 May, suggesting they should canvass Rainborowe’s regiment, spoke in cautious terms of him: ‘be very careful you be not overwitted’.78Clarke Pprs. i, 106.

In early June, Rainborowe was four-square behind the army leadership in opposing the Presbyterian counter-revolution in London, and moved his regiment with John Disbrowe’s* to Windsor to counter the reformadoes of Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton*.79Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 184. This brought Rainborowe still nearer to the highest counsels of the army. The leaders of the 21,000-strong army at Thriplow Heath near Cambridge, Rainborowe among them, wrote on 10 June to the London city government to protest that they sought not to alter ‘the settling of the Presbyterian government’ of the church or the civil constitution, but stood only for the liberties of the subject and a settlement of the peace of the kingdom.80LJ ix. 257a,b. The conciliatory tone of this letter was contradicted by the army’s Declaration of four days later, in which a purge of Parliament, a limit to its sitting in the current and future sessions and a redistribution of seats in the interests of representativeness were demanded.81Haller and Davies, Leveller Tracts, 55. It seems certain that this Declaration was the work of a group of senior officers, Fairfax’s council of war, and thus that Rainborowe was party to the hardening of attitudes in the army.82Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 126-8.

By 26 June the army headquarters, though not the main body of the army, had moved to Uxbridge, to the increasing nervousness of both Houses of Parliament, which sought to treat with its senior commanders. On 2 July, Fairfax appointed Rainborowe with nine others to treat with the representatives of Parliament.83I. Gentles, The New Model Army (1992), 179; LJ ix. 297b, 312a,b. Rainborowe stayed with the army during the whole of the summer of 1647, and in circumstances in which a mutual antipathy had developed between the army officers and the Presbyterian-dominated Parliament, his loyalties were unsurprising. The General Council of the Army, or General Council of War, as it was first known, first met at Reading on 16 and 17 July, and Rainborowe was among those attending. At the meeting on 16 July, which had before it the representations of the agitators who demanded that the army march immediately on London, he spoke to support Oliver Cromwell on the wisdom of adjourning the meeting for further consideration of the issues. Rainborowe even appeared tired of the politics, and seemed content with an early adjournment: ‘That things might be managed as to your wisdoms shall be thought fit. For my part I shall be weary of the meeting’.84Clarke Pprs. i. 170-5, 178, 182. He was nevertheless appointed to the committee reviewing the army’s engagements or commitments, and at the end of the following day’s debates of the Council was the leading officer of the foot regiments nominated by Fairfax to meet further with the 12 agitators to work on what became known as the Heads of the Proposals.85Clarke Pprs. i. 183, 216.

On 26 July violence directed against the Independents in Parliament broke out in London, and the army opened negotiations with the king directly. Rainborowe was one of the delegation which rode to Woburn to show Charles the Heads of the Proposals. The account of Sir John Berkeley, written with the benefit of hindsight, attributes to Rainborowe a pivotal role in these discussions. Charles’s repeated assertions to the army leaders that ‘You cannot be without me; you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you’ repelled Rainborowe enough to cause him to leave the meeting and rejoin the army in its nearby quarters, reporting widely the intransigent defiance of the king. At a further meeting at Bedford between Berkeley and the officers, the king’s intermediary probed the thinking of the army leaders: what would they do if the king accepted their proposals? They replied that they would put them to Parliament, and Berkeley went further and asked what would be the consequences if they were rejected there. Most of the officers responded reasonably and prudently enough that it was not or them to say, whereupon Rainborowe burst out that the army would make Parliament accept.86‘Memoirs of Sir John Berkley’ in Maseres, Select Tracts ii. 368-9; TSP i. 96.

His defiance was then echoed by his colleagues. On the night of 3-4 August Rainborowe moved a brigade of 4,000 men into Surrey and entered Southwark, as a preliminary to entering the city itself.87Clarke Pprs. i. 220. On the 7th, the army marched through the streets of London. Rainborowe’s military duties occupied him for most of August, and on the 29th he was one of the four of the quorum (Cromwell, Robert Hammond* and Henry Ireton* the others) on Fairfax’s new body, the General’s Committee of Officers, apparently renamed the Committee of General Officers by its secretary, William Clarke. This body was distinguished by the powers given it to establish sub-committees that could be co-opted without reference to Fairfax himself.88Clarke Pprs. i. 223-4; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 122. Attendances at the meetings of this council were not recorded, but as a member of the quorum it is highly probable that Rainborowe was among the regular attenders. It is also probable that during August he was manoeuvring for the position of vice-admiral of the fleet, as by early September a bitter dispute with Cromwell had arisen over his suitability for it. A royalist prisoner in the Tower, Sir Lewis Dyve, reported to the king that the friendship of Rainborowe and Cromwell had broken down over the appointment, the latter, Lord Saye and Sele, Oliver St John* and Sir Henry Vane II* having blocked Rainborowe’s ambition on the grounds that his power and popularity had grown too great in the army, and that he was too much his own man.89Dyve Letter Bk. 84.

Dyve reported a Machiavellian plot, by which Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, with Cromwell’s prior approval, would propose an alternative officer for the navy post and Cromwell would pretend to protest and promote the virtues of Rainborowe, and then seem to recognise the merits of Northumberland’s candidate only as a means of not giving offence to the Lords. Dyve reported that Deane was to have the navy place. On 16 September, according to him, Rainborowe interrupted a meeting of Cromwell, Ireton, Vane and St John, banging the table and furiously shouted at Cromwell that ‘he would not longer be abused by him under the colour of friendship and vowed unto him that he would have the place or make him repent it’. After discussion, tempers flared up again, Rainborowe telling Cromwell that ‘it should cost one of them their lives but that he would have the place’. Rainborowe’s determined and fearless intervention secured for him the post, but he had already made progress in his campaign to achieve it, since on 9 September he was added to Parliament’s two main naval executives, the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports and the Committee of Navy and Customs.90CJ v. 297b. He may even have been making his first appearance at one of these when he let fly at Cromwell. Certainly Rainborowe was active in the committee examinations of William Batten, whom he wished to succeed.91Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 16-17. Dyve’s veracity in recounting the episode seems above suspicion, since on 29 September at the Army Council, Deane was recommended by the officers as Rainborowe’s replacement as colonel of the regiment.92Dyve Letter Bk. 89-90; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXVI, f. 18.

In mid-September Rainborowe was in the House, on a committee to examine the complaints of the well-affected in Colchester, and on 22 September acted against Cromwell on a motion that the House be a grand committee to consider matters concerning the king. Cromwell’s yeas won the motion by 84 votes to 34, only after Rainborowe and Marten had unsuccessfully proposed that no further addresses be made to the king. The following day, both Cromwell and Rainborowe were at Putney on army business, but the breach with Cromwell over his navy appointment was widening into a more fundamental difference of views over the possible political settlement.93Clarke Pprs. i. 229-32; CJ v. 301b, 312a; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War iii. 366-7. On 27 September the House of Commons confirmed his appointment as vice-admiral for the forthcoming winter guard and voted him £1,000 towards his arrears of pay. On 1 and 2 October the Lords approved the Commons’ decision and urged that as his appointed ship, Happy Entrance, was not yet ready for sea, he should take another, and hasten to his command. The Lords’ earlier slowness and obstructiveness in matters relating to Rainborowe had been replaced by an unusual desire for speed and an apparent cordiality towards him.94CJ v. 324b; LJ ix. 459a, 476a. On 22 October he was in the House, named to a committee to examine the issue of soldiers’ pay.95CJ v. 340a.

Radical critic of the army grandees, 1647-8

The tensions between Rainborowe and Cromwell were famously in evidence at the meeting of the General Council of Officers at Putney on 28 and 29 October. In the opening addresses of the debates, Cromwell spoke of false rumours that he had said in the Commons that the army had requested a second address to the king; he clarified his position that what he had said on 22 September was his own sense. Rainborowe confirmed his story, but made it clear that it was indeed reported in the House that that had been what the army wanted, thus not relieving Cromwell completely from suspicion.96Clarke Pprs. i. 229-32. Rainborowe’s own initial remarks make it plain that he now resented his imminent commission at sea and wished to stay with his regiment: ‘I am loath to leave the army with whom I will live and die’. He declared that he would rather lose his seat in the Commons. He went on to urge unity in the army and an adherence to a common purpose and determination.97Clarke Pprs. i. 245-7. Cromwell’s attempt at an eirenic welcome was cut short by Rainborowe’s snort that he would only be able to attend if he were not kicked out of the army, a reference to Cromwell’s recent behaviour toward him.98Clarke Pprs. i. 247. His disagreements with Cromwell resurfaced a while later, when in the course of his assertion of the integrity of the army’s engagements, he reverted to the Commons’ having been misled into the erroneous belief that the army sought further addresses with the king. He himself was clear: he was against the king ‘or any power that would destroy God’s people’.99Clarke Pprs. i. 272-3. At the end of that day’s debating Rainborowe was nominated, as he had been previously, to membership of the committee to meet with the agitators to review engagements.100Clarke Pprs. i. 279.

The next day, Rainborowe was late arriving at Putney church, pleading illness which had forced him to go to London. He had become convinced of the need for swift progress, and was impatient with the reviewing committee: ‘let us go the quickest way to work’. Again Rainborowe countered Cromwell’s harking back to engagements, stressing the need to move on.101Clarke Pprs. i. 287-8, 290-2. When An Agreement of the People was brought forth and examined, Rainborowe intervened first to argue that it be made clear who had subscribed the document, and then to make his most celebrated assertion that ‘the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he’.102Clarke Pprs. i. 300-1. His argument was that only those who have knowingly given assent to a form of government have any duty to obey it, a position which went further than that of the avowed Levellers, a group of which Rainborowe cannot be shown to have been a member. His further contributions to the debates dwelt on the absence of justice or justification in the law of men or the law of nature that the franchise was restricted, and he poured scorn particularly on the franchise for corporations: by which means, although he did not point this out, he had been elected to Parliament himself.103Clarke Pprs. i. 303-6, 311, 315, 320, 335. His tone changed between the first and second days of the debates, and on the second day was marked by a recurrent overtone of exasperation with Cromwell and Ireton. His line of reasoning was consistent, however, firmly against that of Ireton – there was ‘a great deal of difference between us two’ – and it cannot be established that Rainborowe was acting in concert with others. His plea to Ireton –‘I wish you would not make the world believe that we are for anarchy’ – cannot be made a self-identification with the Levellers. The first recorded meeting between Rainborowe and John Lilburne took place on 31 October, when Rainborowe spent two hours with the Leveller leader in the Tower: the reporter Dyve’s gloss was that Rainborowe was likely to lead the radicals because of the ‘hatred’ he bore Cromwell. What rings somewhat less than true in Dyve’s account to Charles was his assertion that Rainborowe believed that his cause depended on Charles’s survival as king. Not even the king could give that credence, and in November Dyve acknowledged from his sovereign a correction and warning about Rainborowe’s motives.104Dyve Letter Bk. 95-6.

What Dyve had correctly surmised was that Rainborowe’s popularity with the rank-and-file was now at a high point, and this, together with a coincidental awareness by Cromwell and Ireton of the same fact, can account for a change of attitudes towards his imminent naval command.105Ludlow, Mems. i. 166. Rainborowe no longer wished to go to sea, as was evident at the Putney debates, at the end of which he was named to the committee to try to harmonise army declarations with the Agreement of the People. It was reported by royalist sources on 4 November that Rainborowe, Thomas Pride* and Henry Marten* were ‘so violent in the new way against king, army, Parliament and all eminency’ that Cromwell and others were likely to join them through fear. On the 8th, Rainborowe persuaded the army Council that no more addresses should be made to the king; Ireton apparently left the meeting in disgust, but subsequently returned.106Clarendon SP ii. appendix, xl, xli. On 12 November Rainborowe again attended the House, where he was named to the committee appointed to examine the circumstances of the king’s escape from Hampton Court.107CJ v. 357a. His role at the mustering of six regiments of the army at Corkbush Field, near Ware in Hertfordshire on 15 November was the culmination of his growing radicalism over many months and may have been provoked by the crisis over the king’s escape. At the debates in Putney he had been calling for a general rendezvous of the army, but seems to have been overruled.108Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 241. The junior officers and agitators had worked hard to persuade the rank-and-file to adhere to the Agreement as their best hope of recovering arrears of pay and achieving indemnity, but their resolve seems to have collapsed when a senior officer was arrested, a drumhead court-martial was held and a soldier subsequently shot. Rainborowe turned up at Ware, and presented the also newly-arrived Fairfax with a copy of the Agreement, amid expressions of regret by soldiers from the regiment of Thomas Harrison I* that they had owned the document. Rainborowe was alone, without his regiment which by this time had been reallocated, and he was no longer formally a colonel of the army. If this had been his attempt to put himself at the head of a revolt, it had badly misfired.109A Full Relation of the Proceedings at the Rendezvous (1647), 4-6 (E.414.13). Instead, a Remonstrance was formulated which should have been acceptable to every soldier.110A Remonstrance from his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax and his Councell of Warre (1647), n.p. (E.414.14). Later Leveller martyrology would present the remaining months of Rainborowe’s life as punishment by Cromwell for his promotion of the Agreement at Ware.111‘The Second Part of England’s New-Chaines Discovered’, in Leveller Tracts, 178.

The following day, the events at Ware were discussed in the House, and Rainborowe was summoned forthwith to explain himself: a few days later a committee was appointed for the purpose of examining him.112CJ v. 359b, 363a, 366a. It was rumoured that he was one of a number of MPs to be expelled the House.113Verney MSS (BL, Film M6368), Denton to Ralph Verney, 18 Nov. 1647. In these circumstances, his appointment as vice-admiral of the winter guard no longer seemed wise to anyone, and it is a measure of his continued high standing among the officer cadre as a whole that after praying ‘very fervently and pathetically’ for ten hours, Rainborowe’s army colleagues concluded that while he ‘acted some things that gave offence’ his past services should not be forgotten and that they should recommend him for the place of vice-admiral.114LJ ix. 526b; A Perfect Diurnall no. 230 (20 - 27 Dec. 1647), 1855. MPs had not been so sure. Five days before Ware the House had rejected the appointment by three votes, but the army Council’s expressions of confidence in Rainborowe convinced the Commons at least, and they reversed their former vote by 88 votes to 66, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Edmund Ludlowe II acting as tellers for the yeas. The continuing freedom of the king to cause further trouble must have concentrated their minds. The Lords took longer to persuade, conceiving it ‘dangerous’ to give command to Rainborowe, but by early January, with or without their consent, he was ordered to the Isle of Wight to join the fleet.115CJ v. 378b, 403ab, 405b, 406a, 407a, 417a; LJ ix. 606b, 615a; A Perfect Diurnall no. 230 (20-27 Dec. 1647), 1854, 1856; Whitelocke, Mems. 286.

Final postings and assassination, 1648

From January to May 1648, Rainborowe energetically reorganised the fleet and its commanding officers from his flagship, Reformation.116CJ v. 503b, 528a, 533a, 545a; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 18. He seems to have been engaged mainly in guarding the English Channel, with some patrols of the Irish Sea. His command was not outstandingly successful; he was tricked by impostors posing as members of the royal family.117Bodl. Tanner 57 (i), 23; CJ v. 568b; Stent, thesis, 160. It was hardly his fault that parliamentary authority in Chatham dockyard broke down in May, but having been warned about the spread of the revolt on shore and in several ships, Rainborowe’s decision to land in Kent was ill-judged. His ship was seized in his absence, and he and his family were put aboard a small boat for London. His letter to the Speaker seems to have been written in a state of shock.118Bodl. Tanner 57 (i), 100, 115; Stent, thesis, 161-66. In June 1648 he was in London, and attended the House, being added to the committee charged with investigating the naval revolt.119CJ v. 610b. He resumed army command, attending the siege of Colchester and acting with Ireton, with whom he had evidently reached a modus vivendi, as a commissioner over the articles of surrender there, on 28 August. He had reverted to the role he had performed so well in 1646.120Another Bloudy Fight at Colchester (1648) (E.460.34); A True Relation of the Surrender of Colchester (1648) (669.f.13.7).

At some time in October 1648, Rainborowe was commissioned to take charge of forces besieging Pontefract Castle, a posting for which experience of the task, if not the region, qualified him eminently. His arrival provoked the resentment of Sir Henry Cholmley*, who communicated his disgust immediately to Speaker Lenthall: he and his local colleagues had been five months in the field, and could not accept having a colonel of less seniority set over them. There was a social resentment, too, at Rainborowe, ‘a bare colonel of foot’: ‘questions of honour’ were between them.121Peacock, ‘Notes’; 42-3. A temporary agreement that Rainborowe and Cholmley should each direct their own forces until an appeal to Parliament were answered proved unacceptable to the southerner, who was temperamentally unlikely to compromise his military authority.122Peacock, ‘Notes’, 42-3; Perfect Occurrences no. 95 (20-27 Oct. 1648), 702 (E.526.20). The House of Commons, on reading Fairfax’s appeal that some care might be taken to respect Chomley’s honour, decided to give the lord general complete authority in the matter.123A Perfect Diurnall no. 229 (13-30 Oct. 1648), 2205 (E.526.21); no. 27 (30 Oct.-6 Nov. 1648), 2214 (E.526.25). Reports from Yorkshire suggested that Cholmley’s competence as a commander was doubtful, that his troops were plundering the countryside and that even his own officers were framing complaints against him to the Commons.124A Perfect Diurnall no. 276 (6-13 Nov. 1648), 2291 [recte 2219] (E.526.27); The True Informer no. 1 (7 Oct.-8 Nov. 1648), 20 (E.526.28).

The breakdown of the guard around Pontefract allowed a royalist raiding party to break out on the night of 27-28 October, and to ride to Doncaster where they were able to deceive the guards that they were delivering messages to Rainborowe from Cromwell. At about eight in the morning of the 29th they gained access to Rainborowe’s bedchamber and told him he would not be harmed if he went quietly with them. He got as far as the horse they had brought for him, but then gave the alarm, and began to struggle with his would-be captors. Their intention seems to have been to kidnap him, but in the ensuing panic Rainborowe was stabbed repeatedly, and died while staggering after the raiders. No guards attended his struggle, and suspicion fell upon his attendants and on Cholmley, but a survey of the evidence suggests strongly that the most that can be alleged against the latter was military ineptitude.125Peacock, ‘Notes’, 46-51; Stent, thesis, 191. Later Leveller interpretations of what had happened blamed Cromwell for sending Rainborowe to a region he did not know, with the hope he might be harmed there, but no evidence for this can be marshalled. Nor was it the case that his death went uninvestigated.126‘The Second Part of England’s New-Chaines Discovered’, in Leveller Tracts, 181; CJ vi. 69a; Perfect Occurrences no. 102 (8-15 Dec. 1648), 742 (E.526.40). Rainborowe’s body was brought back to London two weeks after his death for interment at Wapping. His funeral procession (14 Nov.) included 50 or 60 coaches conveying women, and a cavalcade of mounted riders, so that there were nearly 3,000 mourners in all. A cannon was fired from the Tower in salute, and the Independent divine, Thomas Brooks, preached the sermon.127I. Gentles, ‘Political Funerals during the English Revolution’ in London and the Civil War ed. S. Porter (Basingstoke, 1996), 217-18. A sum of £3,000 was settled on his family, charged first on royalists’ estates, and then on dean and chapter lands.128CJ v. 104a,b, 139b, 150a, 174b, 225b, 231b, 241b, 428a, 429b, 597b. Only one son of Thomas Rainborowe is known to history: William, who was reputed to be a member of the army in the 1650s and alive in 1687.129Stent, thesis, 197-8. None of the family sat in later Parliaments.