Thomas Rawdon and the disaster at Cirencester

Thomas Rawdon was the eldest son of Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, born in March 1612. He seems to have been educated at home until the age of ten, when he was sent to Bordeaux to learn Latin and French at one of the colleges there. Accompanying the Earl of Bristol from Bordeaux to back to England, he became close friends with the earl’s eldest son, George Digby, the future Secretary of State of King Charles I. In 1624 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and thereafter joined his father’s wine importing business, working his factories in Oporto and Lisbon. In 1638 he returned to and was made a freeman of the Clothworkers Company. In 1642 he married Magdalen, daughter of Randolph Crewe, of Hatcham Barnes in (now the area, near ). Crewe was another London merchant who had acquired a country estate on what was then the outskirts of London.

Like his father Thomas was initially neutral during the outbreak of hostilities and he was ordered to remain so by his father after his closet-Royalism was exposed in March 1643 and he fled to Oxford. However in June 1643, Thomas left his wife and mother in the charge of his brother-in-law, Edmund Forster, and joined the king. Instead of serving with in father’s new raised regiment of foot, he was commissioned as a captain of a troop of horse in the regiment of a family friend, Sir Nicholas Crispe, on 10th July 1643. Crispe was another London merchant, who became wealthy importing redwood, used for dyes, and gold from West Africa. He was one of the ringleaders of the closet-Royalists in London until his exposure in January 1643.

Thomas’s cousin and biographer claims that Thomas saw extensive military service, although he possibly overstates this somewhat. Thomas’s first major action was probably at Cirencester in September 1643. On 16th September Crispe’s horse was brigaded with Lord Spencer’s regiment of horse and was quartered at Cirencester. Supposedly they were part of a force intended for a raid into Kent, many of the officer’s having interests there, including Rawdon. Sir Nicholas had just been removed from command after killing a fellow officer in a duel, and Spencer was also absent when the army of the Earl of Essex descended on the town at one in the morning. The Royalists lost about three hundred men, including Major Wormsley, second-in-command of Crispe’s regiment, four hundred horses, forty loads of provisions and several cornets (cavalry flags). Many of Crispe’s officers were captured, including Lieutenant-Colonel Luntley, a brewer from Bankside, and captains Richard Hackett, a former member of the Honourable Artillery Company and captain in the Blue Regiment of the London Trained Band in September 1642, Rutt, the innkeeper of the Three Cups in Bread Street, Colwell, who lived behind the Royal Exchange, and Warren, a sugar baker; all clearly Londoners.

Captain’s cornet of Crispe’s Regiment captured at Cirencester

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In a later petition to Parliament Thomas seems to have implied his military career ended after this:

“…your petitioner was about two yeares and a halfe since by some of his acquaintance drawne (to his now great griefe) to take upp Armes for his Majesty as Capt. of a Troope of horse. But findinge the carriage of things not answerable to what was pretended laid down his armes and hath for about a yeare and a halfe last past lived privatelie and came to London the 23th of Februarie 1645 to submit to the Parliament.”

However he seems to have evaded capture at Cirencester and was reportedly at the First Battle of Newbury on the 20th of the month, where his horse was killed. Prince Rupert commissioned him Lieutenant Colonel to Sir Nicholas Crispe’s Regiment of Horse on 25th October 1643, and he fought at Cheriton on 29th March 1644, where his scarf was shot from around his neck and his horse wounded. On May 13th 1644, with letters of safe conduct, Thomas set off to be the King's agent in Portugal, procuring amongst other things a shipload of saltpetre which he personally accompanied back to Padstow and then onto Oxford, returning in time to fight at the Second Battle of Newbury on 27th October 1644 where “his buff coat being shot through near his belly, but the bullet bring deadened lay betwixt his doublet and shirt, unknown to him till he pulled off his clothes”. His final action may have been accompanying the second relief force that reached Basing House in November 1644, but it seems his heart was no longer in fighting and he had laid down his arms by February 1645. His successor as lieutenant-colonel of Crispe’s regiment was Richard Hackett, who escaped after his capture at Cirencester but was captured again by Sir Thomas Fairfax after skirmish in Dorset in mid- May 1645. Fairfax wrote to Sir Marmaduke Rawdon offering to exchange him in June 1645.

In May 1645 Thomas was unsuccessful in gaining the post of the King’s consul or ambassador in Portugal and lived out the rest of the War living quietly with his family. In 1648 he was amongst the group of Royalists who informally gathered around the king during his detention at Holmby House, Hampton Court and on the Isle of Wight. Following the King’s execution he fled to Tenerife, where he lived with and was supported by his cousin Marmaduke and his younger brother Marmaduke for two years. He then sailed to Barbados where he successfully recovered properties at Rawdon's Plantation and Fisher's Pond, which had been illegally occupied by Captain James Holdip, formerly factor to Sir Marmaduke, and now one of first sugar planters on the island. With his fortunes much improved he was joined by his wife, and then to sailed to Italy where he visited Rome and Venice amongst other cities. However ill-fortune returned when, on route back to Barbados, he was almost taken prisoner by Barbary pirates and threatened with execution by the Spanish, who were now at war with the English, when he was captured off Majorca. Having convinced them he was no friend of Cromwell he was finally put ashore, minus his possessions, and then had to make the sixty-mile trip "pennyless and almost stript" to Cadiz, where he was able to continue his voyage.

In 1662 he sold his effects in Barbados and returned with his family to England. George Digby, his old friend, introduced him to court with the hope of restitution, but in 1665, having given up on this, Thomas retired to Hoddesdon in 1665. After one more voyage to Barbados, to secure the money promised to him when he sold his plantation there, he died of a fever at Hoddesdon on 30th August 1666, and was buried at Broxborne Church under a marble stone with this inscription:

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“Hic jacet Thomas Rawdon Marmaduci Rawdon, Equitis Aurati, filius natu maximus, vir vitae integer, Conjugis memor, a Rege Carolo, beatissimae memoriae, Regi Lusitaniae legatus, pro Rege Carolo contra Rebelles, praefectus; quo vitam tam Bello quam Pace, a Rege, Ecclesia, Conjuge et Amicis, optime merlinus, sepultus fuit, 30 die Augusti, A. D. 1666. Aetat. 54, Matrimonii 25; reliquit superstites tres Filios, Marmaducum, Thomam, et Georgium; et duas filias, Elizabetham, et Magdalenam. Parce tamem lachrimis, sat plorat flebilis uxor, Conjugis in moestos sufficit illa rogos.”

According to his biographer “He was pleasant and obliging in company, both to his relations and strangers; of good judgment, well spoken, and well seen in letters, having a good genius in expression ; and was indeed in all things an accomplished gentleman, having very high thoughts, though his success was not answerable, which inclined him, before his death, a little unto melancholy.”

Richard Dace [email protected]

April 2020.

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