The Rainborowes

The period between 1630 and 1660 was one of the most tumultuous in Western history. These three decades witnessed the birth of English America and, in the mother country, a vicious civil war that rent the very fabric of English social, political, and religious life. It was an era of death and new beginnings, and at its heart was one remarkable family: the Rainborowes.

In The Rainborowes, acclaimed historian Adrian Tinniswood tells the story of this all-but-forgotten clan for the very first time, showing how the family bridged two worlds as they struggled to build a godly community for themselves and their kin. The Rainborowes’ patriarch, William, was a shipmaster and merchant whose taste for adventure and profit drew him into the expanding transatlantic traffic between England and its colonies in the New World. Eventually two of his daughters settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, marrying into the upper echelons of New England society. Back in England, meanwhile, William Rainborowe’s sons threw themselves behind the English parliament in its rebellion against King Charles I. So, too, did many New World settlers, who returned to England to fight for the parliamentary cause. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, many of these revolutionaries quit their homeland for New England, where their dreams of liberty and equality were much closer to being realized.

Following the Rainborowes from hectic London shipyards to remote Aegean islands, from the muddy streets of Boston to the battles of the English Civil War, Tinniswood reveals the indelible marks they left on America and England—and the profound and irrevocable changes these thirty years had on the family and their fellow Englishmen in Europe and America. A feat of historical reporting, The Rainborowes spans oceans and generations to show how the American identity was forged in the crucible of England’s bloody civil war.

“Adrian Tinniswood has followed the irrepressible Rainborowes from church pews to battlefields to the decks of ships battling pirates, and here offers a compelling history of a clan at the center of much of the action that recast the English seventeenth century. This is a captivating family history with the twists and turns of a favorite novel that you don’t want to put down.”

—Peter C. Mancall, author of Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson

“The Rainborowe clan fought pirates, freed English slaves in North Africa, intermarried with the ruling family of Massachusetts, pioneered transatlantic trade, and led Parliament’s army and navy. In his lively and fluent chronicle of the family, Adrian Tinniswood shows how their short tempers, religious conviction, and passion for political equality shaped New England at its founding and remade old England during its Civil Wars.”

—Caleb Crain, author of Necessary Errors and American Sympathy

“A lively account of an important family in the Atlantic world of the seventeenth century.”

—Francis J. Bremer, author of Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, A Puritan in Three Worlds

“In this fascinating story of a remarkable family, the Rainborowes and their relatives, Adrian Tinniswood presents a vivid and compelling account of the tumultuous events that swept across the English transatlantic world in the mid-17th century, transforming England and America alike. Through the lens of the Rainborowes’ changing fortunes during bloody civil war, mass migration, and social and religious upheaval, the author reminds us of the powerful ties of kinship and faith that spanned the English Atlantic, and of the intense personal struggles that helped shape old and New England in this formative period.”

—James Horn, author of A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

“Adrian Tinniswood recounts the story of this fascinating family with verve and insight. The Rainborowes moved near the center of the circles that hoped first to create a model society in New England and then to transform old England. From the docks of Wapping to the newly settled village of Cambridge, Massachusetts, from the chambers of the Long Parliament to the streets of Doncaster where Thomas Rainborowe died, Tinniswood brings to life these godly reform-minded sailors, soldiers, and settlers.”

—Carla Gardina Pestana, Professor & Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World Department of History, UCLA