So, you all ready to be part of a "famous" family? IF so then you're ready for the Banker "Desboe". This one's a fascinating story of random treasure discovered in ye olde London town, the financial section of course. I was down that way one day looking for "famous" Coleman street, that place so radical & important to our very early New Haven Puritan founders (including our Holbridges, plus even Rev. Jones too, in fact---so what's up with THAT connection then!). One infrequent rainy day, on one of my very infrequent DAYTIME rambles, I stumbled into the Bank of England Museum "downtown" not just to get outta the rain (This was outta routine since I usually was working all day at Brit Library or PRO, so most of my touring was done during "midnight" rambles, to maximize research time: including one such down Grey's Inn Road to Holborn---after I closed down Brit. Library that night, half mile up the road--- Holborn is where "The Cromwellian Gazetteer" said I might encounter Cromwell's ghost, ....So, of course I did! Well, not till just this month actually, but still spooky nonetheless, since just THIS month of September I came across a recent book VERY disturbingly pertinent to that very SAME place of that particular "midnight ramble" where "resurrection men" once hung-out with their "wares" (corpses for selling to medical types), plus a very olde pub full of 17th c. ghosts near Red Lion Square, plus the tale of Cromwell's "gh! ost," ...and now I can see all that ramble was not just for the "fun" of it, but somehow strangely pertinent to such as the secret swapping of Oliver Cromwell's body long after his very PROBABLE "assassination" by the King's agents using poison. Those Holborn "resurrection men" actually may have saved Cromwell's corpse from its humiliating date with the hangman & desecration, by instead perhaps burying his long dead corpse in nearby Red Lion Square, raising later legends of his ghost (so next time you're in London give all reverence to the great man, probably quietly resting in the center of this first, intentionally planned, "garden square" of London---also read "The Death of Oliver Cromwell" by McMains, pub. 2000!....Grey's Inn is at Holborn too, where our more lawyerly Disbrowes were educated to the law, as was Oliver Cromwell himself and a few others pertinent to our family story, but I digress,...too easily...). While poking around the very well set-up Banking Museum that rainy day in the financial district, what should I stumble upon in one of their very early exhibits (modern banks & the Bank of England did not start up until the late 17th c.!!)? YES, that's right: the Banker "Desboe." Here's what the display said next to an original bank note: "THE EARLIEST KNOWN BANK NOTE 1660, 8 DECEMBER...FROM MR. VANACKER TO MR. DESBOE. My heart stopped, ...my ultimate in "name magic." Could it possibly be? ...Well, yes, it possibly could be! Here's why: there were two generations of Disbrowes immediately descended from the Major General who were tied to the family of one Cornelius "VANDEN ANKER" (perhaps sometimes hastily shortened even as the above spelling "VanAcker"???). Eddis Johnson & Harold Disbrowe (of Canada) report in their genealogy of the Disbrowe antecedents from England (1986), concerning Benjamin Disbrow, son of the Major General: "His 2nd marriage was to Sa! rah (Norden) Sarn, relict of Andrew Sarn, merchant of Dort, Holland and secondly, of Cornelius Vanden Anker, merchant of LONDON [my emphasis], apparently there were no children by this marriage to Disbrowe. she died 9 April 1692 [momentous year THAT], and was buried at Downham, M.I. [This 2nd wife] had had by her second marriage to Cornelius Vanden Anker a daughter Cornelia, who married Cromwell Disbrow, son of her third husband Benjamin Disbrowe and his first wife, Elizabeth Armsted. Thus, Cornelia became Benjamin Disbrowe's step-daughter, as well as his daughter-in-law (footnte: "Memoirs of Protectoral House of Cromwell," Noble, v. II, 252-3) Our Disbrowes were very prominent of course, even after the flashy guys had had their brief day in the sun under Cromwell. So, by later in 17th c. Disbrowes were settling into quiet prosperity and a more secure social standing, gradually,...doing so "the olde fashioned way." This includes one "John Disbrowe" who had become a "goldsmith" (which profession is as the name implies & who also acted as money lenders/banker types: now recall my preoccupation about a year ago w/ Fairfield surname of Gold/Gould, and then too my decidedly odd, growing interest in the profession of 17th c. "goldsmithing" then??). Goldsmiths were the earliest "modern" bankers, not to mention imbued with a certain alchemical mystical aura, as I believe was inevitable. Just as Jews had once been both too, ...for many hundreds of years they were the informal "bankers" of Europe, supplying much needed service to kings & lesser investor-types alike, ...so did the Knights Templer, actually --which ! is why they were obliterated, and to some extent the Jews as well---afterall, who doesn't end-up resenting one's banker, I guess....King Phillip of France became jealous & so covetous as to bluntly destroy the Templers in order to rob them (with the help of a greedy pope back in 14th c.)... but that King never did find their fabulous "treasure"----So, where'd it all go...have I then found it in "Mr Desboe" & Company??? So, who was this "Desboe" guy then? There is following I found at Cambridgeshire Library (don't ask me why I find these things!), from "The Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Oct 1932-33, v. XXXIV;" this article: "A Cambridge Seal-Box of the 17th C. by A.S. Gow, Trinity College....The silver box, of which the lid and bottom are here illustrated, belongs to the Earl of Home, who has kindly allowed me to publish it. Its history has been forgotten but can, I think, be reconstructed with some certainty [not unlike our own Disbrowes too, as I'm doing]; before I begin to reconstruct it, however, let me describe the box itself and the cord which passes through it....The latter consists of two lengths of plaited thread, one of gold, the other of silver.....etc. [from 1st pg. of article: p. 59;....then on page 69 is the following]...Urlin was not the only qualified goldsmith resident in Cambridge at this time; there was another, Jon Disbrow who had supplied ! the seal-box for the Duke of Monmouth's patent in 1674; and he also renders his account in a form which suggests that he was the maker and not the middleman...The evidence is not absolutely conclusive---in such a case, conclusive evidence can hardly be expected---but there seems to me to be a strong presumption that all these three boxes were made in Cambridge, and that Monmouth's and Albemarles were also finished there." [note: that would be Duke of Albemarle who was once a very important colleague of our own Samuel Disbrow in Scotland under Cromwell: later given his title by Ch II, for services in ushering in the Restoration, & for which act Albemarle was bitterly hated by many "republican" types who felt betrayed,... hence that so-called "White's Plot" of 1660 to murder him that I've mentioned, & then so much more intrigue than that too;....MORE than one son of our own Major Gen. Disbrowe is reputed to have been involved in very serious post-Restoration intrigues, as wa! s the General himself from Holland, this includes the "famous" Rye House Plot, and even, as I believe, the above Duke of Monmouth's uprising which help usher in the later "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, a "revolution" much longed for by our own Disbrowe Puritan types, now called "dissenters" & "Whigs," just as was our own Thomas Disbrow-2 of Fairfield so called a "dissenter" at Westchester, NY by 1703, etc....This article also has the following footnote, #2, abt our "goldsmith" John Disbrow]: "Disbrow, unlike Urlin, was a Iocal man. He was baptized at Chesterton [thank you Carl Dunn for coincidentally raising "Chesterton" just yesterday from our musty Disbrowe attic!] on 5 April 1646 and was the son of John Disbrow of that parish, a malster, who in May 1662, pleaded guilty in the Vice-Chancellor's court to a charge of unstatutable dealing in barley and malt within the University boundaries [note: sounds like our Arthur Holbridge from New Haven records!!], and is described ! in the proceedings as "yoeman" (Registry MSS. 37.2.17). The son apprenticed himself in London to John WARD [note some "name magic": recall the 1681 Lord Mayor of London, Sir Patience Ward, who m. a Hobson sister-in-law to our Samuel Disbrowe via his m. to Rose Hobson Pennoyer] on 5 July 1661, and became a freeman of the Goldsmith's Company in 1668; he is identifiable by the description "goldsmith" in three lists of townsmen enjoying University privileges (Registry MSS. 36.2.74:one undated, one of 1676, one of 1679)---in which he appears as servant to Dr. Linnett of Trinity (who was Vicar of Chesterton)---and as the Mr. Disbrow who was sent to London to choose plate for the Corporation in 1689 (see below, p. 71). The name, very variously spelt [!!]....{note: HEY WHAT, so even as "Desboe" probably then when someone is in a rush??], is common in Cambridge and in the district, and further identifications are less certain. I take the goldsmith to be the John who married Ann Ri! chardson of Chesterton in 1670, describing himself as of LONDON [my emphasis!!}, where he had been from at least 1661 to 1668 (Cambs. Parish Registers, Marriages, I, 62). Probably he is also the John who became a freeman of the town in 1679-80, was fined for passing office in the same year, but was among the auditors of the treasurer's accounts in 1686 ("Liber Rationalis" among the Bowtell MSS. in Downing College), and among the Common Councilmen removed from office two years later ("Alderman Newton's Diary," p. 93). There was also, however a John of Barnwell who paid hearth-tax in 1664 and three years earlier harboured a thief at his house, the Sign of the George (W. M Palmer, "Reformation of the Corporation," C.A.S. Comm. XVII, 112); one who was buried in Trinity Parish in 1668; one who was married in 1609 ("Cambs. Par. Reg., Marriages," VII, 3), to say nothing of natives of Cheveley, Madingly, and Swavesey (ibid.II, 75, III, 130, VIII, 78; Cooper, "Annals," III, 641, c! f. p. 459). Why the University on this occasion employed Disbrow and not Urlin, the older man, I cannot guess [can any of you then???]...IT is possible that Disbrow and Urlin were not the only goldsmiths in Cambridge at this time; in 1668 the University paid John Richardson[related to John Disbrow's wife Ann, above???] 28s. for the Marshal's engraved badge, and in 1671 for engraving a seal-box (p. 74); in that year Trinity College paid "Richards the goldsmith" 10s. for repairs to plate. I have encountered neither (if indeed they are two) elsewhere. The records of the Company contain several apprentices of both names, but none of them were Cambridge men by birth. " Now then, there is more yet about Disbrow "bankers" in subsequent generations of the Disbrowe, from Eltisely even. There is the following from very old notes graciously given to me by the village historian at Eltisley, Mike Sawyer. While not always quite accurate, these very old notes do fill in far more blanks than I ever knew even existed! "From the book 'Contemporary Biographies'.--1912. Charles John Desborough, J.P., HARTFORD HOUSE [my emphasis: so, it would be called that right!?], near Huntingdon; son of the late William Henry Desborough, BANKER [my emphasis; my family also had a William Henry Disbrow in the line I think he was, as my Dad just reminded me other day, very coincidentally,... went to RPI, I believe], a descendant of General Desborough, of the Cromwellian period, who married a sister of the Lord Protector; born at Ramsgate, Kent, August 1850; educated at Harrow. BANKER [my emphasis]; a Director of Barclay and Company, LTD.; Justice of the Peace ! for the County of Huntingdon. Amongst former Mayors of Huntingdon are recorded Laurence Desborough in 1768 and 1774, and William Desborough in 1801. Married, in 1878, Constance, Daughter of the late Edward Maule (Solicitor and clerk of the Peace for Huntingdon), and has issue three sons and three daughters" WHEW, can resist noting that MAULE name,straight from Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables then?? (Wasn't there actually someone also named "Maule," I guess, in Salem witch trials, ...must go back & confirm!?) Happy early Halloween! STSquires