1687, Records of Fort St. George, Diary and Consultation Book, Madras: 1916, entry for November 1687, p. 180,
[…] Potty Cawn was discharged from his Nabobship, and return’d to his Governmᵗ att Changalaput […]
(figurative, archaic) A position of extremely great wealth.
1772, James Iredell, letter dated 20 July, 1772, cited in Don Higginbotham (ed.), The Papers of James Iredell, Raleigh, NC: Division of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources, 1976, p. 109,
[…] an encumbered West India Estate, with the tax of high living, is no Nabobship, and an unfortunate Crop is a very severe shock to such a one.
1792, Edmund Randolph, letter dated 25 May, 1792, cited in Frances Norton Mason (ed.), John Norton & Sons, Merchants of London and Virginia, New York: A.M. Kelley, 1968, p. 503,
He bought a coachee, and had his own horses from home. They travelled [in] the stile of ancient Virginia Nabobship.
1795, Noah Webster, quoted in the papers of Oliver Wolcott Jr., cited in Leonard D. White, The Federalists, New York: Macmillan, 1964, p. 273,
If men, who are loading the govt with curses, & denouncing our Chief Magistrate, as a tyrant […] are to be raised to opulence and nabobship, […] who are the friends that will maintain that govt?