SINGLETON, William (1602-67), of St Nicholas parish, Gloucester.

A son of Gloucester whose extended family was settled in St Nicholas parish, William Singleton was a woollen-draper. He worked his way up the ladder of civic office in the conventional way, becoming mayor during a plague year, and at the time when Ship Money was controversial.15Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 74. He was commended for his actions in limiting the spread of the contagion in the city.16CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 582. He kept in his house, over the mantelpiece, a working model of the funeral procession of Sir Philip Sidney†, ‘engraved and painted on papers pasted together’, which occupied the entire length of the room. It made a great impression on the antiquary John Aubrey, who saw it on a visit around 1635.17Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 249. Singleton’s interest in this curio presumably derived from the outburst of patriotic sentiment occasioned by Sidney’s remarkable funeral in 1586.18Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Philip Sidney’. He was elected to the Short Parliament as a leading citizen of Gloucester, and was named to the committee working on an act for needle-makers and steel wire-drawers.19CJ ii. 17b. On 16 June, he signed a letter to the lord lieutenant, Spencer Compton, 2nd earl of Northampton, enclosing a list of militia tax defaulters. The Gloucester men asked fruitlessly for a reduction in the levy.20HMC Beaufort, 492-3.

Singleton was not elected to the Long Parliament, but at the outbreak of civil war was active in fortifying Gloucester. He paid £50 to the regiment of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford in February 1643.21Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 246. From April 1643, he served as a captain in the city regiment of Henry Stephens.22Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 254. During the long siege by the royalists, a plot to betray the city to its enemies was revealed to him, and his prompt action prevented Gloucester’s fall.23J. Corbet, ‘An Historicall Relation of the Military Government of Gloucester’ (1645), in J. Washbourn, Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis (Gloucester, 1825), 75. Singleton and William Pury I* went to Sir William Waller* in September 1644 about filling the vacant commissions in the Gloucester regiment, presumably with names in mind, and in June 1645, he and Luke Nourse* were appointed temporary governors of the garrison, pending the arrival of Colonel Lloyd to take charge.24CJ iv. 159b. In February 1646, he and two other aldermen were recommended by the corporation to the Speaker and the committee for Gloucester that met in the House, for membership of the committee for the county and for Herefordshire.25Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 309, 370.

Singleton was able to serve the city with equanimity throughout the political changes of the 1640s and 50s. During his second mayoralty in 1651-2, he signed a letter from the corporation presenting its services to Lord General Oliver Cromwell*, and hoping for favours in return.26HMC Beaufort, 505. The speech by the town clerk, John Dorney, when Singleton left office in October 1652 reveals something of conditions in the city during his mayoralty. He commented on the declining trade of the city, attributing some of this to alienation by the gentry, who deplored Gloucester’s faithfulness to Parliament. The town clerk was presumably voicing the opinions of Singleton and the civic hierarchy in calling for compensation for losses in the city caused by fire, when civic officials calculated these losses to be an enormous £28,720. Singleton probably echoed Dorney’s wish for the removal of the garrison from his city, and thought that trade would be stimulated by a return to normal civic government. Religion was in decline, but more godly zeal in Gloucester would provide another stimulus to trade there. Dorney’s wish that the cathedral church, ‘the great ornament of this city’, could be repaired by Singleton’s successors, struck the right note with the civic fathers, Presbyterian in outlook though they were.27J. Dorney, Certain Speeches (1653), 77-83; HMC Beaufort, 511-2. Dorney urged that Singleton be accorded ‘double honour’ for his ‘double service’.28Dorney, Certain Speeches, 81.

After his second term as mayor, Singleton played less of an active role in city government, but he did not retire completely, and continued to attend chamber meetings as one of the most senior aldermen. In March 1662 he was given another of his many leases of city property, with the privilege of being able to assign the leases himself.29Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 222, 229, 231. It was virtually inevitable that someone with his history of doughty resistance to the monarchy would not survive the visit of the commissioners for corporations, and on 21 July 1662, Singleton was ejected from his office as alderman, along with Luke Nourse*.30Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 235-6. He continued to live in Gloucester, and made his will on 27 August 1667, perceiving that ‘the hour of death comes (as our Saviour saith) as a thief in the night’. He left cash bequests of over £600, and died three months later, being buried at St Nicholas church on 22 November.31PROB11/326/118; St Nicholas par. reg. None of his descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.