William Rainsborowe

William Rainsborowe (? - fl. 1639–1673), or Rainsborough, Rainborough, Rainborowe or Rainbow, was a Leveller and an officer in the English Navy and New Model Army in England during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. He was a political and religious radical who prospered during the years of the Parliamentary ascendancy and an early settler of New England in North America.

Rainsborowe's birth and early years are obscure, although his father, William Rainsborough, was a captain and Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, and later Ambassador to Morocco (at which time he declined a hereditary Knighthood). William moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s with his sisters, at one point living in Charlestown and was serving in the militia there in 1639. At some point, William and his brother, Thomas Rainsborough, were both involved in an expedition to the other Puritan colony, Providence Island colony, off the coast of Nicaragua. Providence Island fell to the Spanish in 1641. Rainborowe was called back to England upon the death of his father in 1642. He married a woman named Margery Jenney upon his return and almost immediately went to serve in the Navy. He was part of an expedition to Ireland in 1642-3 and then became an officer in a cavalry unit in 1644. He and his brother, Thomas Rainsborough, were both Levellers and probably members of the congregationalist churches known at the time as "Independents" (who were generally more militantly anti-Catholic and opposed to the Established Church than the Puritans).

In the New Model Army, he was a captain serving for Colonel Thomas Sheffield. However, his radicalism emerged early, and in 1647 at a meeting with Parliamentary commissioners, he testified against Sheffield, saying that the army was demoralized, and he outlined the complaints of his men. He was subsequently promoted to the rank of major. The same year, 1647, he showed his Leveller convictions during the army's Putney Debates at the end of October. William's brother, Thomas Rainborowe, was more fiery in his Leveller speeches, and he was murdered in 1648. William led the funeral, and a pamphlet called The Second Part of Englands New Chaines Discovered of that year discussed Rainsborowe's attempts at finding justice and the resistance of the upper classes. William Rainsborowe's coronet, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, was, during this time, a depiction of the severed head of Charles I and the motto salus populi: suprema lex ("let the good of the people be the supreme law").

In 1649, when issues surrounding the Leveller movement were at a head, Rainsborowe was removed from command. He would be recommended for promotion twice in the 1650s, and each time the recommendation would be overruled by the government. He hosted Ranters meetings, and he was arrested for paying for the publication of Laurence Clarkson's The Single Eye (1650). During the 1650s, Rainsborowe put his religious and political views into economic action. He purchased ecclesiastical lands, and he purchased the formerly crown estate of Highams Park. Rainborowe's wealth was extensive, for the estate was sold for ₤5,498 in 1654.

The Rump Parliament made him a colonel and had him raise a regiment in 1659, but the Rump itself was dissolved and overturned. Rainsborowe protested against this by signing A Remonstrance and Protestation of the Well-Affected People, and he tried to sell the arms he had purchased for his militia. A political radical selling a great store of pistols just in the midst of a change from republicanism to a crown was extremely provocative, and this prompted his arrest for suspicion of treason in December of 1660, at the time of the Restoration. He was released on bail soon after and left England. He does not enter public record again until his death in 1673 in Boston.