Isaac Rebow
Sir Isaac Rebow (1655 – 1726) was a clothier and merchant who served as Member of Parliament for Colchester in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
[3][9] He inherited a partial interest in the reversionary lease of two lighthouses in Harwich through his first wife, whose mother was the heir to Sir William Batten, and in 1707 was granted a patent allowing him to charge all ships passing them.
[14] While he was out of Parliament, Rebow was appointed to the Commission of the Peace in 1690, examining "dangerous persons" who had tried to leave the country, and as Vice-Admiral of Essex in August 1692, being paid £150 a year until 1697 to impress 300 men and gathering information about goods being smuggled from Holland in 1696.
Rebow himself was put into the care of the serjeant-at-arms in January 1697, having been absent from Westminster without permission, and in August of that year, the Government used his influence to quarter two companies of troops in Colchester.
Colchester's other MP, the Tory Sir Thomas Cooke, nominated the Queen's husband, Prince George of Denmark, perhaps because Rebow had encouraged burgesses to petition against his election the year before.
[3] One account suggests that the Prince was successfully nominated despite the recorder telling the free burgesses that he would not accept the post, but Creffeild ran away with the borough mace to avoid having to declare the result.
[14] John Comyns, the MP for nearby Maldon, successfully petitioned for a court order enrolling the Prince as High Steward, but the mayor refused to follow this as Rebow claimed to have been legally elected.
[3] Rebow continued to serve as MP, successfully contesting the 1705 election in which Cooke was replaced by the Whig Edward Bullock following the creation of 200 free burgesses by his opponents.
A by-election in December 1705, caused by the death of Bullock, saw over 100 more free burgesses created in places such as alehouses and taverns by the new mayor, Rebow's supporter John Raynham.
[14] He started to attend meetings of the borough's common council in the autumn 1709, partly because of an economic crisis (he warned the Government that "the poor threaten to rise" owing to the price of wheat, rye and bread) but also possibly because he was aware that he was likely to face a political challenge.
Ahead of that year's election, two orders were passed allowing the Whigs to disfranchise the Tory prosecutors in the mayoral dispute and to establish a committee that was able to create more free burgesses.
[14] In July 1714, a new Commission for the Peace for Suffolk was set out by Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke from which Rebow was excluded, as part of a purge of Whigs.
[3] Later that year, the weavers of Colchester asked Parliament for help in a dispute between them and the town's clothiers, caused by several restrictions introduced as a result of the downturn in the cloth trade.
Rebow was appointed to a Commons Committee on the issue, which concluded that "the poor weavers had been most previously oppressed" and annulled a 1707 law that had restricted the right to make bays.
[22]: 4 Rebow is said to have been a personal friend of William III, who shared his Dutch origins, visiting him in Colchester at least three times between 1693 and 1700[23]: 2-3 and knighting him when he dined there in March 1693.
[3] His contemporary and fellow Whig Daniel Defoe described him as "a gentleman of a good family and known character" in his 1724 book A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain.
[24] It was built in the late seventeenth century (possibly incorporating some timber framing from an earlier property) above medieval cellars,[23]: 2 which he may have used to store goods as part of his mercantile activities.
[23]: 6 A 2016 assessment of the building's fabric found features consistent with this depiction,[23]: 21-22 but it has also been claimed that it may show an unbuilt design for the rebuilding of the house, abandoned when the Rebow family moved to Wivenhoe Park.
[23]: 2 It is now a Grade II* listed building[31] known as Rebow House and, following a restoration completed in 2021 by its current owners, the Tollgate Partnership, comprises three offices and a shop.
[23]: 3 To the south, running parallel with the side of the house and the site of its gardens, lies Sir Isaac's Walk, a road which Rebow "gravelled and made handsome" according to the eighteenth century historian Philip Morant.
His footman, James Owen, was convicted of the theft of books, gold and silver lace, cloth coats, money and other goods on 1 June, sentenced to death[35] and executed.
A relative, who is recorded variously under the names Elizabeth Crawley, Rebecca Alston and Rebecca Crawley in the court records, pled not guilty to buying and receiving stolen goods, but after being held in prison for six months changed her plea as a result of her landlord seizing her goods, evicting her husband and children, and not having sufficient resources to stage her defence.
He left his daughter Susan, Lady Bacon his Pall Mall residence (on the condition that she paid his executors £300), her mother's diamond necklace and portrait and £2000 (in addition to her marriage portion of £8000).
