MASTER, Sir William (1600-1662), of Cirencester Abbey, Glos.

Master’s grandfather, of Kentish origin, became physician to Queen Elizabeth,18 Oxford DNB sub Master, Richard. purchased the reversion of Cirencester Abbey in 1565,19 CPR, 1563-6, p. 201. and built ‘a fine seat, with handsome gardens’ on the site.20 Rudder, 356. His father sat for the borough in 1586 and 1589. Master himself was returned to the last Jacobean Parliament in 1624. He defeated (Sir) Maurice Berkeley*, whose petition was rejected by the committee for privileges under the chairmanship of Lady Master’s uncle John Glanville.21 J. Glanville, Reports (1775), pp. 104-11 Master’s only committee appointment was for a bill to prevent the conversion of arable land into pasture (24 March).22 CJ, i. 748b. He received a discharge from a Privy Seal loan in April 1626,23 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 723. and in February 1627 was one of the commissioners who refused either to implement or pay the Forced Loan, whereupon he was bound over bound over to appear before the Privy Council.24 SP16/54/28i, viii. There is no evidence of further proceedings against him, which suggests that he subsequently paid. During his shrieval year his brother-in-law Sir Giles Estcourt was elected for Cirencester. He was involved in a dispute over the advowson of the Gloucestershire rectory of North Cerney in the 1630s, and purchased Coln St. Dennis, six miles from Cirencester, in 1637.25 VCH Glos. vii. 160; viii. 29.

Appointed a commissioner of array by the king and a deputy lieutenant by Parliament, Master helped to save the 6th Lord Chandos from the Cirencester rioters in 1642 and supported the king in the Civil War,26 W. St. Clair Baddeley, Cirencester, 247. entertaining Charles at his house in 1643 and 1644.27 J. Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, ii. 431, 438. Before compounding at £1,482 as a delinquent, however, he pleaded that he had at first maintained a horseman for Parliament, and had been forced to sign royalist warrants when Rupert captured Cirencester.28 CCC, 85, 1143-4; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 532. Following the execution of Charles I he ‘lived a long while grieving for his martyred king’. A ‘paralytic disease’ threatened to cut his own life short, but his faith that the monarchy would eventually be restored is said to have enabled him to withstand his illness.29 J. Maclean, ‘Armory and merchants marks in the ancient church of Cirencester’, Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. xvii. 313. He made his will on 31 Oct. 1661 and was buried at Cirencester on 13 Mar. 1662. His eldest son Thomas, to whom he left ‘my great book of statutes’ and his copy of Camden’s Britannia, proved his will in February 1663 and sat for Cirencester in the Convention Parliament.30 PROB 11/310, ff. 96-7; Cirencester par. reg. (Soc. Gen. mic. 451).