# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rumbold, William

​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.
Henry Rumbold (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 ​in London in 1653, during the interregnum, he resided in Spain, being in partnership as a wine merchant at Puerto Sta Maria with Anthony Upton, Secretary Thurloe's brother-in-law; Sir Benjamin Bathurst [q. v.], afterwards succeeded him in the firm. More loyal than patriotic, he communicated to the court of Madrid intelligence (obtained through Upton) of the movements of Blake's fleet (1656–1657), and used the interest which he thus made to facilitate the recognition of Henry Bennet (afterwards Lord Arlington) [q. v.] as the accredited representative of the king of England (1658). Through Bennet's influence he obtained on the Restoration the consulate of Cadiz and Puerto Sta Maria; and while holding this post provisioned, at his own risk, Lord Sandwich's fleet and the town of Tangier during the interval between the cession of that place to the British crown and its occupation [Montagu, Edward, first Earl of Sandwich; Mordaunt, Henry, second Earl of Peterborough]. He also furnished supplies and recruits to the garrison after the occupation. Resigning the consulate, he returned to England in 1663, and was sworn in as gentleman of the privy chamber in extraordinary (December). He also held for a time a commissionership of prizes, and the consulate of Malaga, San Lucar, and Seville, the latter post as a sinecure, for he continued to reside in England until his death, which took place in London in March 1690. He was buried at All Saints, Fulham, on 28 March. His younger brother, Thomas, acted as his deputy, and afterwards as consul at San Lucar, where he died on 19 Jan. 1705–1706.
Henry Rumbold married twice, in both cases according to the rite of the catholic church. His first wife, married in 1663, was Isabel de Avila; his second, married shortly before his return to England, was Francisca Maria, daughter of Bryan I'Anson, merchant of Cadiz and grandee of Spain, second son of Sir Bryan I'Anson, created baronet by Charles II in 1652. A son by this marriage was grandfather of Sir Thomas Rumbold [q. v.]
By his first wife he had issue a son, Henry Rumbold (d. 1689), who served with distinction as a cavalry officer in Tangier between 1662 and 1671, when he was sent home as escort to Lady Middleton. An engagement of marriage which he formed on the voyage with a daughter of Sir Robert Paston, was apparently broken off by the lady's family. He was, however, twice married, and his widow remarried John Cotton Plowden, younger brother of Francis Plowden, comptroller of the household to James II.
J. M. R.