RAINBOROWE, William (c. 1617–1673)

William Rainborowe [Rainsborowe, Rainsborough] was the younger brother of the parliamentarian army officer and Leveller Thomas Rainborowe (ODNB), and son of William Rainborow (ODNB), a Levant merchant and naval officer. He grew up in Wapping, Middlesex, close to the Thames, to the east of the City of London. Like his brother Thomas, William was a mariner with ambitions for overseas trade.

Rainborowe emigrated in the late 1630s and in 1639 settled at Charlestown and joined the Massachusetts Artillery Company. He bought the original meetinghouse grounds in Charlestown, and had a house at Watertown, December 1640. On 8 March 1643/4, after he had already left New England, he petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for payment of £6 for gunpowder; he was paid an extra £20 because the payment was so long overdue. Rainborowe's sisters Martha and Judith had also settled in New England. (Martha, widow of Thomas Coytmore, married governor John Winthrop in 1647: after Winthrop's death in 1649 she re-married, but was widowed again, and committed suicide in 1660. Judith married Stephen Winthrop* in 1643.)

Rainborowe returned to England by 1642. In April that year, he had come into a substantial inheritance from his father: houses in Wapping, and a thousand pounds in cash. In June, he married Margery Jenney of Suffolk. Over the summer, he joined Lord Forbes's expedition to Ireland, in a troop commanded by his brother, Thomas, which had Hugh Peter* as chaplain. John Humfrey* also joined this venture.