1658 he returned to England (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1658–9, pp. 463, 467, 480), receiving a lieutenancy in Lockhart's Dunkirk regiment on 26 Aug. 1659 (ib. 1659–60, p. 151). He subsequently attained the rank of captain, and on the return of Charles II retired to Holland. He appears to have been employed by Arlington to act as a spy on De Witt and the English exiles in that country, but, being detected in an attempt to play a double game, was committed to the Tower in February 1666, where he remained until September in the following year (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661–7, passim). He married Anne, one of the ten daughters of Sir John Corbet, bart., of Stoke, Shropshire. Three other sons, Valentine, Samuel, and Benjamin, survived their father, and their fortunes are minutely traced in Noble's ‘Memoirs.’ Desborough married again in April 1658 (Thurloe, vii. 42; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1657–8, p. 356). His second wife is said, on the dubious authority of Betham, to have been Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Everard, bart., of Much Waltham, Essex (Baronetage, iii. 239 n.).
Desborough's patriotism was tempered by a strict regard for his own interests. Deficient in all the qualities of a statesman, he sought to introduce a military despotism under which he might hope to hold a high command. His rustic origin, person, and manners are constantly ridiculed in the ‘Rump’ songs and other effusions of cavalier hate. He figures in ‘Hudibras,’ and Butler has also devoted some lines to him in the ‘Parable of the Lion and Fox’ (Hudibras, ed. Grey, 1744, ii. 245–6). He appears as the ‘grim Gyant Desborough’ in ‘Don Juan Lamberto’ (1661), to which is prefixed a woodcut representing Desborough and Lambert, the former with a huge club in his right hand, leading the ‘meek knight,’ i.e. Richard Cromwell, under the arms. There is a quarto engraving of him on horseback, published by Peter Stent, and another from an original by A. Simon. A fine autograph of Desborough is appended to his letter to Colonel Clarke, 1654 (Addit. MS. 21506, f. 74).
A younger brother, Samuel Desborough (1619–1690), born at Eltisley in November 1619, was obliged to retire to America on account of his religion. He arrived at New Haven in 1639, and became one of the early settlers of Guilford, Connecticut, in 1641. Returning home in the autumn of 1650 he sought employment under the Commonwealth (Savage, Genealog. Dict. ii. 41–2). In 1652 he was acting as a commissioner at Leith (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1651–2, pp. 281, 328, 1652–3, p. 221). On 4 May 1655 he was appointed by Cromwell one of the nine commissioners for Scotland (ib. 1655, pp. 108, 152), and keeper of the great seal of Scotland on 16 Sept. 1657 (Egerton MS. 2519, f. 17), an office in which he was continued by Richard Cromwell. He represented Midlothian in the parliament of 1656 (Thurloe, v. 295, 366), and Edinburgh in that of 1658–9 (ib. vii. 584). Upon the prospect of the Restoration he prudently embraced the declaration of Breda, and signed his submission, in the presence of Monck, on 21 May 1660. He obtained a full pardon, with restitution of goods and lands, on the following 12 Dec. (Egerton MS. 2519, ff. 32, 34). After this he retired to his seat at Elsworth, Cambridgeshire, which, with the manor and rectory, he had purchased in 1656 (Lysons, Mag. Brit. vol. ii. pt. i., Cambridgeshire, p. 183). He died there on 10 Dec. 1690 (Will reg. in P. C. C. 66, Vere). He was twice married: first, to Dorothy, daughter of Henry Whitfield of Ockley, Surrey, the first minister of Guilford (Savage, iv. 517). By her, who died in 1654, he had a daughter Sarah, born in March 1649, and a son James, a doctor of medicine (Munk, Coll. of Phys. 1878, i. 477; Lysons, Environs, ii. 499). The son married, on 9 March 1678–9, Abigail, daughter of John Marsh of St. Albans, Hertfordshire (Chester, Marriage Licenses, ed. Foster, 4941), and had a daughter Elizabeth, who became the wife of Matthew Holworthy, only son of Sir Matthew Holworthy, knight, of Great Palgrave, Norfolk. He died at his house in Stepney Causeway about the same time as his father, for his will, dated on 26 Nov. 1690, was proved on 14 Jan. 1690–1 (Reg. in P. C. C. 4, Vere). Desborough married for the second time in 1655 Rose Hobson, who had previously been married, first to a Mr. Lacey, and secondly to Samuel Penoyer, merchant and citizen of London. She died on 4 March 1698–9, aged 82 (Will reg. in P. C. C. 58, Pett).
[Addit. (Cole) MS. 5810, ff. 72 b, 73 b, 75 b; Egerton MS. 2519; Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (Carlyle), 2nd edit.; Thurloe's State Papers; Whitelocke's Memorials; Ludlow's Memoirs; Clarendon's History (1849); Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Noble's Memoirs of Protectoral House of Cromwell, 2nd edit. i. 89, ii. 274–99, full of the grossest errors; Noble's Lives of the Regicides, i. 178–9; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), ii. 155; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd edit. iii. 71–2; Cromwelliana; Somers Tracts, 2nd edit. vii. 104; Commons' Journals, ix. 763; A Perfect Diurnal, No. 144, p. 1151; Hoare's Wiltshire, vi. 425, 430, 431, 435.]
DESENFANS, NOEL JOSEPH (1745–1807), picture dealer, was born at Douai in 1745, educated at Paris, and came to England as a teacher of languages. But a taste for
