Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/403

 Scottish government had him tried at once, lest he should escape his punishment by death. He was tried on 26 June, protested his innocence of any design to assassinate the king, was found guilty, and was sentenced to be executed the same afternoon. In his dying speech he declared his belief that kingly government was the best of all government so long as the contract between king and people was observed. When it was broken, the people were free to defend their rights. Divine right he scoffed at. ‘I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him’ (State Trials, xi. 873–81). The court which tried Rumbold ordered his quarters to be placed on the gates of various Scottish towns, but the English government had them sent to England to be set up on one of the gates of the city and in Hertfordshire (ib. p. 875;, History of the Revolution, p. 32).

Rumbold had a brother William who was also implicated in the Rye House plot, and apparently in Monmouth's rebellion. He was pardoned by James II in 1688 (, Diary, i. 444).

[Authorities referred to in the article; Burnet's Own Time, ed. 1833, iii. 32; Fox's Historof the Reign of James II, pp. 216, clvi.] 

RUMBOLD, THOMAS (1736–1791), Indian administrator, third and youngest son of William Rumbold, an officer in the East India Company's naval service, by Dorothy, widow of John Mann, an officer in the same service, and daughter of Thomas Cheney of Hackney, was born at Leytonstone, Essex, on 15 June 1736 [as to his ancestry, see, (1613–1667)]. Of his two brothers, William, the elder, born at Leytonstone in 1730, entered the East India Company's military service, and after giving promise of a brilliant career, died at Fort St. David, between Trichinopoly and Madras, on 1 Aug. 1757; the second, Henry, died at sea at an early age. William Rumbold, the father, died second in council at Tellicherry in 1745; his widow died in England on 19 July 1752.

Thomas Rumbold was educated for the East India Company's service, which he entered as a writer on 8 Jan. 1752, and sailed for Fort St. George towards the end of the same month. Soon after his arrival in India he exchanged the civil for the military service of the company. He served under Lawrence in the operations about Trichinopoly in 1754, and under Clive at the siege of Calcutta in 1756–7, and for gallantry displayed during the latter operations was rewarded by Clive with a captain's commission. He was Clive's aide-de-camp at Plassey, was severely wounded during the action, and on his recovery resumed his career in the civil service. Part of the years 1762–3 he spent in England on furlough. On his return to India he was appointed chief of Patna, and from 1766 to 1769 sat in the Bengal council. Having made his fortune, Rumbold came home in the latter year, and was returned to parliament for New Shoreham on 26 Nov. 1770.

On 11 June 1777 he succeeded Lord Pigot as governor of Madras, where he landed on 8 Feb. 1778 [see ]. The affairs of the presidency were then in a somewhat tangled condition. Under imperial firman the company had acquired in August 1765 the rich province of the Northern circars extending north-eastward from the Carnatic between the Deccan, Berar, and the bay of Bengal as far as Lake Chilka. The title of the company had been disputed by the nizam of the Deccan, and the dispute had been adjusted by a treaty (23 Feb. 1768), under which the nizam, in return for an annual tribute, ceded the circars to the company, with the single reservation that the Guntur circar should be held by his brother, Basalut Jung, the reversion being in the company, with the right of ousting him in the event of his proving hostile.

Rumbold found that the rents payable to the company by the zemindars of the circars, and by consequence the tribute payable to the nizam, were in arrear. The ‘committee of circuit’ charged with the assessment and collection of the rents had proved incompetent. He therefore superseded the committee, summoned the zemindars to Madras, and revised the rents himself, substituting for the existing system of yearly tenancies leases for three years at a lower rent, an arrangement equally equitable to the zemindars and profitable to the company. He also substituted a three years' lease for a yearly tenancy in the case of a jaghire held by the nabob of Arcot, on condition of the construction of some needful irrigation works. At the same time he improved the revenue from Vizagapatam by exposing the frauds of the steward of the Vizianagram family, and providing for the better management of the estates. In the Guntur circar Basalut Jung had for some years maintained a French force under Lally. This was viewed as a breach of faith both at Fort St. George and at Fort William, and remonstrances had been