The Rainborowes

The enthralling history of one English family who changed the world through the turbulent years of the Civil War and birth of the New World

The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World.

Starting with William Rainborowe, a prominent merchant-mariner and shipmaster, and his equally formidable sons and daughters between 1630 and 1660, we follow their astonishing story through the Civil War, the Putney debates, and settling in America. The Rainborowes explains America and mourns England’s failed revolution. It spans oceans and ideologies and encompasses personal tragedies and triumphs, the death of kings and the birth of nations.

Using rare printed material from the period and unpublished manuscripts from collections in Britain and America The Rainborowes recreates day-to-day life on both sides of the Atlantic during one of the most tumultuous periods in Western history. In their efforts to build a paradise on earth, the Rainborowes and their friends encounter pirates and witches, prophets and princes, Muslem militants and Mohican Indians. They build new societies. They are ordinary men and women, and they do an extraordinary thing.

They change the world.