Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rumbold, Thomas
RUMBOLD, Sir THOMAS (1736–1791), Indian administrator, third and youngest son of William Rumbold, an officer in the East India Company's naval service, by Dorothy, widow of John Mann, an officer in the same service, and daughter of Thomas Cheney of Hackney, was born at Leytonstone, Essex, on 15 June 1736 [as to his ancestry, see Rumbold, William, (1613–1667)]. Of his two brothers, William, the elder, born at Leytonstone in 1730, entered the East India Company's military service, and after giving promise of a brilliant career, died at Fort St. David, between Trichinopoly and Madras, on 1 Aug. 1757; the second, Henry, died at sea at an early age. William Rumbold, the father, died second in council at Tellicherry in 1745; his widow died in England on 19 July 1752.
Thomas Rumbold was educated for the East India Company's service, which he entered as a writer on 8 Jan. 1752, and sailed for Fort St. George towards the end of the same month. Soon after his arrival in India he exchanged the civil for the military service of the company. He served under Lawrence in the operations about Trichinopoly in 1754, and under Clive at the siege of Calcutta in 1756–7, and for gallantry displayed during the latter operations was rewarded by Clive with a captain's commission. He was Clive's aide-de-camp at Plassey, was severely wounded during the action, and on his recovery resumed his career in the civil service. Part of the years 1762–3 he spent in England on furlough. On his return to India he was appointed chief of Patna, and from 1766 to 1769 sat in the Bengal council. Having made his fortune, Rumbold came home in the latter year, and was returned to parliament for New Shoreham on 26 Nov. 1770.
On 11 June 1777 he succeeded Lord Pigot as governor of Madras, where he landed on 8 Feb. 1778 [see Pigot, George, Baron Pigot]. The affairs of the presidency were then in a somewhat tangled condition. Under imperial firman the company had acquired in August 1765 the rich province of the Northern circars extending north-eastward from the Carnatic between the Deccan, Berar, and the bay of Bengal as far as Lake Chilka. The title of the company had been disputed by the nizam of the Deccan, and the dispute had been adjusted by a treaty (23 Feb. 1768), under which the nizam, in return for an annual tribute, ceded the circars to the company, with the single reservation that the Guntur circar should be held by his brother, Basalut Jung, the reversion being in the company, with the right of ousting him in the event of his proving hostile.
Rumbold found that the rents payable to the company by the zemindars of the circars, and by consequence the tribute payable to the nizam, were in arrear. The ‘committee of circuit’ charged with the assessment and collection of the rents had proved incompetent. He therefore superseded the committee, summoned the zemindars to Madras, and revised the rents himself, substituting for the existing system of yearly tenancies leases for three years at a lower rent, an arrangement equally equitable to the zemindars and profitable to the company. He also substituted a three years' lease for a yearly tenancy in the case of a jaghire held by the nabob of Arcot, on condition of the construction of some needful irrigation works. At the same time he improved the revenue from Vizagapatam by exposing the frauds of the steward of the Vizianagram family, and providing for the better management of the estates. In the Guntur circar Basalut Jung had for some years maintained a French force under Lally. This was viewed as a breach of faith both at Fort St. George and at Fort William, and remonstrances had been addressed to the nizam without effect. Rumbold added another, with the same want of result. On the outbreak of hostilities between England and France, he gave orders to arrest Europeans approaching the circar, and posted a corps of observation on the frontier. He also, under orders from home, detached Colonel (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro [q. v.] to attack Pondicherry, and Colonel Braithwaite to reduce Mahé on the Malabar coast. Pondicherry capitulated on 17 Oct. 1778. The directors voted Rumbold their thanks, and the crown conferred a baronetcy on him (23 March 1779). Mahé surrendered on 19 March 1779. On 7 Feb. 1779 Basalut Jung leased the Guntur circar to the company, and shortly afterwards he dismissed Lally's contingent and received a British force in its place. This arrangement had been authorised in general terms by the governor-general (Warren Hastings), who had left its completion entirely in Rumbold's hands. The treaty by which it was carried into effect was submitted neither to him nor to the nizam. The circar was shortly afterwards subleased to the nabob of Arcot. The cession of the circar gave offence not only to the nizam but to Haidar Ali. The former took Lally's contingent into his pay, the latter menaced Basalut Jung's capital, Adoni; and Rumbold, in the course of the summer of 1779, attempted to pass troops to his relief through a part of Haidar's dominions. Haidar's troops were on the alert, and the detachment was compelled to retreat.
Suspecting Haidar of hostile designs, Rumbold wrote to Hastings, confessing his apprehensions and asking for men and money. Hastings made light of his fears, declined to furnish the desired aid, and, believing a French invasion of the Bombay presidency to be imminent, recommended that Colonel Braithwaite's force should be detached to the support of Colonel Goddard at Surat. Rumbold gave the necessary orders, but Braithwaite found himself unable to move. In the course of the summer Rumbold sent Hollond, a political officer, to Haiderabad to explain to the nizam the arrangement with Basalut Jung, and to bring him, if possible, to remit the tribute in whole or in part, and dismiss Lally's contingent. As no quid pro quo was offered for these concessions, the mission wore the appearance of a studied affront. The nizam showed great irritation, and was already talking of the size of his army, when Hastings, to whom Hollond had communicated the tenor of his instructions, terminated the negotiation by a peremptory despatch. About the same time Rumbold sounded Haidar's intentions through the medium of the Danish missionary, Christian Frederick Swartz, and obtained a written response in which vague expressions of friendship were mingled with severe reflections on the course of British policy since 1752. This letter was written in August, and it is probable that Haidar had then concerted with the Mahratta powers the plan of combined action against the British which was put in execution in the following year. At any rate, Rumbold was cognisant of the existence of the confederacy in January 1780, when he detached a considerable force to the support of Goddard at Surat. He then reinforced the circars, began to concentrate the detachments scattered about the presidency, ordered a new levy of sepoys, and recalled those quartered in Tellicherry. Having made these dispositions, he wrote to the directors (21 Jan.) announcing his resignation on the score of ill-health. On 6 April he sailed for England. In the following July Haidar and his allies invaded the Carnatic. The nizam of the Deccan remained neutral. On his return to England, Rumbold was held responsible for the invasion of the Carnatic and dismissed the service of the company by the court of directors. They also filed a bill against him in chancery, but abandoned it on the institution of a parliamentary inquiry. Rumbold himself had been returned (14 April 1781) for Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. Parliament eventually proceeded against him by bill of pains and penalties, at the same time restraining him from leaving the kingdom, and requiring him to make discovery of his property. The restraining bill passed both houses in June 1782. The bill of pains and penalties, saved from lapse by a continuing act, passed its second reading in the commons on 23 Jan. 1783, and was then talked out. Contemporary scandal said that the prosecution languished owing to the good offices of Richard Rigby [q. v.], the parliamentary wirepuller, whose nephew, Colonel Hale Rigby, had married Rumbold's daughter Frances, and whom Rumbold was supposed to have aided in his pecuniary embarrassments (Wraxall, Hist. Memoirs, ed. Wheatley, ii. 380). Rumbold's defence was conducted with great ability by George Hardinge [q. v.] The charges against him were in substance that his dealings with the zemindars of the circars were oppressive and corrupt; that his dealings with the nabob of Arcot were corrupt; that, by the reduction of Pondicherry and Mahé, the occupation of the Guntur circar, the subsequent brush with Haidar's troops, and the affair of the tribute, he had so irritated Haidar and the nizam of the Deccan as to occasion the formation of the confederacy which eventually took the field against the British. The charges of oppression and corruption were refuted by the records of the presidency and Rumbold's accounts, and the other charges fared no better. The responsibility for the Pondicherry and Mahé expeditions rested not with Rumbold but with the authorities at home; and the evidence pointed to the conclusion that the confederacy had been formed independently of the other causes of irritation. At the general election of March 1784 Rumbold was returned for Weymouth, which borough he represented until the dissolution of 1790. He died on 11 Nov. 1791. His remains were interred in the church of Watton, Hertfordshire, in which parish he had his seat of Woodhall Park.
Rumbold married twice: first, on 22 June 1756, Frances, only daughter of James Berriman; secondly, on 2 May 1772, Joanna, daughter of Dr. Edmund Law, bishop of Carlisle. He had issue by both wives. His title devolved on his second son by his first wife, Sir George Berriman Rumbold, bart. [q. v.] His estates passed under his will to his children by his second wife. The accounts of Rumbold's administration given by Wilks and Mill (see authorities infra) are based on the preamble to the bill of pains and penalties, unqualified by the evidence by which it was defeated. The facts concerning him have thus been misrepresented, and much unfair obloquy cast upon him.
A print of Rumbold's profile is in the ‘European Magazine,’ 1782, pt. i. facing p. 319.
[Gent. Mag. 1779 pp. 153, 179, 1791 pt. ii. p. 1156; Ann. Reg. 1779, p. 178; Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, vol. vii. (East Indies: Carnatic War); London Gazette, 23 March 1779; Minutes of the Evidence, &c., on the second reading of a bill for inflicting pains and penalties on Sir Thomas Rumbold, bart. (1783); Rumbold's Answer to the Charges, &c. (1782); Miss Rumbold's posthumous Vindication of the Character and Administration of Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. (edited anonymously by Dr. Rigg, 1868); Marshman's History of India, ed. 1867, vol. i. Appendix; Orme's Hist. of India, ii. passim; The Real Facts concerning Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. (printed for private circulation, 1893); Mill's History of India, ed. Wilson, iv. 63–170; Wilks's Historical Sketches of the South of India; Parl. Hist. xxii. 122, 1275–1333 xxiii. 983; Commons' Journ. xxxviii. 961, 987, 1065 xxxix. 31, 82 et seq.; Lords' Journ. xxxvi. 532; Pearson's Memoirs of Rev. Christian Frederick Swartz, 1835, pp. 67–71; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, ii. 475, 491; Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. pt. vi. pp. 21–9.]