Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/405

 tated Haidar and the nizam of the Deccan as to occasion the formation of the confederacy which eventually took the field against the British. The charges of oppression and corruption were refuted by the records of the presidency and Rumbold's accounts, and the other charges fared no better. The responsibility for the Pondicherry and Mahé expeditions rested not with Rumbold but with the authorities at home; and the evidence pointed to the conclusion that the confederacy had been formed independently of the other causes of irritation. At the general election of March 1784 Rumbold was returned for Weymouth, which borough he represented until the dissolution of 1790. He died on 11 Nov. 1791. His remains were interred in the church of Watton, Hertfordshire, in which parish he had his seat of Woodhall Park.

Rumbold married twice: first, on 22 June 1756, Frances, only daughter of James Berriman; secondly, on 2 May 1772, Joanna, daughter of Dr. Edmund Law, bishop of Carlisle. He had issue by both wives. His title devolved on his second son by his first wife, Sir George Berriman Rumbold, bart. [q. v.] His estates passed under his will to his children by his second wife. The accounts of Rumbold's administration given by Wilks and Mill (see authorities infra) are based on the preamble to the bill of pains and penalties, unqualified by the evidence by which it was defeated. The facts concerning him have thus been misrepresented, and much unfair obloquy cast upon him.

A print of Rumbold's profile is in the ‘European Magazine,’ 1782, pt. i. facing p. 319.

[Gent. Mag. 1779 pp. 153, 179, 1791 pt. ii. p. 1156; Ann. Reg. 1779, p. 178; Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, vol. vii. (East Indies: Carnatic War); London Gazette, 23 March 1779; Minutes of the Evidence, &c., on the second reading of a bill for inflicting pains and penalties on Sir Thomas Rumbold, bart. (1783); Rumbold's Answer to the Charges, &c. (1782); Miss Rumbold's posthumous Vindication of the Character and Administration of Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. (edited anonymously by Dr. Rigg, 1868); Marshman's History of India, ed. 1867, vol. i. Appendix; Orme's Hist. of India, ii. passim; The Real Facts concerning Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. (printed for private circulation, 1893); Mill's History of India, ed. Wilson, iv. 63–170; Wilks's Historical Sketches of the South of India; Parl. Hist. xxii. 122, 1275–1333 xxiii. 983; Commons' Journ. xxxviii. 961, 987, 1065 xxxix. 31, 82 et seq.; Lords' Journ. xxxvi. 532; Pearson's Memoirs of Rev. Christian Frederick Swartz, 1835, pp. 67–71; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, ii. 475, 491; Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. pt. vi. pp. 21–9.] 

RUMBOLD, WILLIAM (1613–1667), cavalier, was born in 1613 at or near Burbage, Leicestershire, where his family, a branch of the Rumbolds of Hertfordshire, had been settled for three generations. In 1629 he obtained a subordinate post in the great wardrobe office, in which he was still employed on the outbreak of the civil war. He was the officer sent to London to fetch the royal standard set up at Nottingham, and was in attendance on Charles I until after the battle of Naseby, when he joined his brother Henry [see below] in Spain. He returned to England on the execution of the king, and throughout the interregnum acted as Charles II's financial agent and secretary to the secret royalist council. Denounced to Cromwell by Sir Richard Willis on the suppression of Penruddock's rising (March 1655), he was confined first in the Gatehouse and afterwards with more strictness in the Tower. Nevertheless he contrived to keep up, under the aliases Robinson and Wright, an active correspondence with Sir Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) [q. v.] and James Butler, twelfth earl (afterwards first duke) of Ormonde [q. v.] (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 300 et seq.; Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ed. Macray and Coxe, vol. iii.). His imprisonment lasted rather more than two years. On his enlargement he was one of the prime movers in Sir George Booth's plot, and afterwards co-operated with John Mordaunt, baron Mordaunt of Reigate [q. v.], in the hazardous enterprise of securing the adhesion of Monck and the city of London to the royal cause. On the Restoration he was made comptroller of the great wardrobe, and in December 1663 surveyor-general of the customs. He was also one of the commissioners for tracing the dispersed regalia. He died at his house at Parson's Green, Fulham, on 27 May 1667. His remains were interred in Fulham church. By his wife Mary, daughter of William Barclay, esquire of the body to Charles I, who survived him but a few months, he had issue—with three daughters, of whom Mary, the eldest, married James Sloane, M.P. for Thetford (1696–8), brother of Sir Hans Sloane [q. v.]—a son Edward, his successor in the surveyor-generalship of the customs, who married Anne, daughter of George, viscount Grandison, and died without issue at Enfield in 1726.

(1617–1690), younger brother of William Rumbold, was baptised at Burbage in 1617. During the civil war, and except for a visit to his brother William