25 Facts About Isaac Rebow

Sir Isaac Rebow was a clothier and merchant who served as Member of Parliament for Colchester in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Isaac Rebow's parents came from two prominent Colchester families with Flemish origins.

Isaac Rebow's father was the clothier and merchant John Rebow, while his mother, Sarah, was the daughter of the wealthy Colchester bay-maker and merchant Francis Tayspill.

Isaac Rebow had a wide range of business interests, which he appears to have conducted on a non-partisan basis despite his Whig political interests.

Isaac Rebow's will listed lands in Essex, Kent, Suffolk and Middlesex among his assets, as well as the manor of Gasper, then in Somerset.

Isaac Rebow 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.

Against this background, Isaac Rebow held, at one time or another, all of Colchester's most significant political roles.

Isaac Rebow was elected as MP for the first time in 1689, serving in the Convention Parliament which offered the throne to William III and Mary II.

Isaac Rebow lost his seat in the following year's election, despite petitioning twice that he had won the most votes.

Three polls had been taken, with Isaac Rebow topping all of them but with different totals.

Isaac Rebow probably topped the poll at the 1695 election and his election was not disputed, despite an unsuccessful attempt to challenge the election of his fellow Whig Sir John Morden by the defeated MP Sir Thomas Cooke, against whose voters Rebow's steward John Wheeley gave evidence.

In 1698, Isaac Rebow presented two bills related to Colchester to Parliament.

Colchester's other MP, the Tory Sir Thomas Cooke, nominated the Queen's husband, Prince George of Denmark, perhaps because Isaac Rebow had encouraged burgesses to petition against his election the year before.

Isaac Rebow claimed that Cooke hadn't attended the prince and he would persuade Creffeild to call a new election as "the prince is but a subject and so am I".

Isaac 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.

Isaac Rebow started to attend meetings of the borough's common council in the autumn 1709, partly because of an economic crisis but possibly because he was aware that he was likely to face a political challenge.

Isaac Rebow topped the poll at the 1710 election but although Webster was initially elected as the other MP, the third candidate William Gore successfully petitioned to replace Webster over the illegitimate creation of free burgesses.

Isaac 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.

Isaac Rebow stood unsuccessfully at the 1722 election and his petition about the result was not heard, despite being renewed twice.

Accounts of Isaac Rebow's family do not agree on its size.

The most recent of the three volumes of The History of Parliament covering Isaac Rebow's career suggests that he had one son and one daughter by his first marriage and one son and three daughters by his second, but the older volumes give lower totals.

Isaac Rebow is known to have inhabited 13 Soho Square, Westminster from 1696 to at least 1703.

Panelling and fireplaces contemporary with Isaac Rebow are still in situ inside the house.

Charles Chamberlain Isaac Rebow was left only Colchester Castle on account of his being a "disobedient and undutiful grandson".

Three later members of the Isaac Rebow family went on to be MPs for Colchester.