Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/183

 Herts, spinster, about 20.’ He is entered in the pedigrees of the family in Burke's ‘Peerage’ (sub. ‘Feversham’) and Hoare's ‘Wiltshire’ (sub. ‘Downton,’ iii. 45) as the son of Alexander Duncombe of Drayton, Buckinghamshire (who married, 15 May 1645, Mary, daughter of Richard Paulye, lord of the manor of Whitchurch in that county), and as baptised at Whitchurch 16 Nov. 1648. The entry in Le Neve's ‘Knights’ runs: ‘His father, a haberdasher of hatts in Southwark as some say, others that he was steward to Sir Will. Tiringham of Tiringham in Bucks,’ and the balance of probability inclines to the latter statement. Charles was apprenticed to Alderman Backwell [q. v.], the leading goldsmith of London, whose son and heir was married to the daughter of Sir William Tyringham; but on his master's financial embarrassment he succeeded in escaping entanglement. In the ‘London Directory’ of 1677, in the list of ‘goldsmiths who keep running cashes,’ occur the names of ‘Char. Duncomb and Richard Kent, at the Grashopper in Lombard Street,’ and the firm is stated to have been established there a few years before that date. So early as 1672 Duncombe had attained to a leading position in the city of London. He was at that time banker to Lord Shaftesbury, from whom he received a timely warning of the projected closing of the exchequer by Charles II, and by this means he was enabled to withdraw ‘a very great sum of his own,’ and 30,000l. belonging to the Marquis of Winchester, afterwards the first duke of Bolton. He remained a city banker until August 1695, when Luttrell records in his ‘Diary:’ ‘This week Charles Duncomb sold all his effects in the Bank of England, being 80,000l.’ On his retirement, ‘at the moment when the trade of the kingdom was depressed to the lowest point,’ he purchased the estate of Helmsley in Yorkshire, which had been bestowed by the House of Commons on Fairfax, and had passed in dowry with Fairfax's daughter to the Duke of Buckingham. This was the greatest purchase ever made by any subject in England; the consideration money is fixed by Evelyn ‘at neare 90,000l., and he is reported to have neare as much in cash.’ The character of old Euclio (, Moral Essays, ep. i. 11. 256–61), the dying miser who, even in his last agony, could not consent to part with all his substance, has been fathered on Duncombe, and Pope alludes to his acquisition of land in the couplet— And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight, Slides to a scrivener or city-knight. Macaulay describes the transfer of the estate.

Macaulay describes the transfer of the estate, and adds : 'In a few years a palace more splendid and costly than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent Villiers rose amidst the beautiful woods and waters which had been his, and was called by the once humble name of Duncombe.'

Under Charles II and James II the receivership of the customs was held by Duncombe (Harl. MS. 7020), and when the latter monarch fled to France, he sent to the receiver for ‘1,500l. to carry him over sea, which he denied,’ a proceeding which caused Duncombe's name to appear as the only excepted citizen in the general declaration of pardon which the exiled James issued on 20 April 1692. When the lieutenancy of London carried their address to the Prince of Orange, desiring him to repair forthwith to the city, Duncombe formed one of the deputation. After his retirement from business he took a more active part in public affairs. Among his landed purchases was the estate of Barford, in the borough of Downton in Wiltshire. He was M.P. for Yarmouth (Isle of Wight) 1690 to 1695, and Downton returned him to parliament from Oct. 1695 till he was expelled from the House of Commons in 1698, and again from 1702 to the year of his death. In the city of London, which he contested without success in 1700–1, 1701, and 1702, he took high rank among the leaders of the tory citizens; and as the Bank of England was started and fostered by whig financiers, it met with his opposition (, First Nine Years of Bank of England, passim). He had been alderman of Broad Street ward (1683–6). He was elected sheriff on 24 June 1699 without a poll, and when the corporation waited on the king at Kensington on 20 Oct. in the same year to express their satisfaction at his safe return Duncombe was knighted. On 31 May 1700 he was chosen alderman of Bridge ward by a majority of three to one, and in that year he was nominated as lord mayor of London, with the result that on the declaration of the polling of the livery the numbers were—Duncombe 2,752, Abney 1,919, Hedges 1,912, and Dashwood 1,110 (1 Oct. 1700). A week later the aldermen met to make their choice, when by fourteen votes to twelve, amid great excitement and fierce recriminations, they gave their decision in favour of Abney. He was a whig, and Duncombe was a tory, and as the new East India Company worked for Abney, the old body laboured for his opponent. Next year Duncombe was again nominated as lord mayor, but his election did not take place until September 1708, when he was unanimously chosen to that office. He was treasurer of the Artillery Company for five years (1703–8), but his party's management of its affairs did not prove beneficial to the company's interests.

Duncombe had obtained his receivership of