MASHAM, Sir William, 1st bt. (1591-1656), of Otes, High Laver, Essex.

By 1640 Sir William Masham was a well-established member of the Essex gentry. Previous generations of the family had lived in Suffolk but he had chosen to settle at High Laver in Essex, partly because his wife was a member of one of the county’s most prominent families, the Barringtons of Hatfield Broad Oak. The purchase of a baronetcy, service as a justice of the peace and election to Parliament as MP for Maldon had all consolidated his position within his adoptive county. Between 1626 and 1628 he had been imprisoned in the Fleet as an opponent of the Forced Loan.53HP Commons 1604-1629. Through his wife, he was part of the dense network of godly Barrington relatives. Lady Masham was a sister of Sir Thomas Barrington*, a first cousin of Oliver St John* and Oliver Cromwell* and the mother (from her first marriage) of St John’s wife. This, in turn, linked Masham to the most powerful political figure in Essex, the 2nd earl of Warwick (Robert Rich†).

In the first of the 1640 elections the burgesses of the most important of the Essex borough constituencies, Colchester, chose Masham and Harbottle Grimston* to serve as their MPs. A month later Masham would argue in Parliament that peers and justices of the peace should not interfere in parliamentary elections.54Procs. Short Parl. 234. This was perhaps rather two-faced, as he had probably benefited from Warwick’s cooperation to gain the Colchester seat. Having been appointed to the committee which made the arrangements for the fast day on 26 April, he and Sir Thomas Barrington acted as the churchwardens for the service held in St Margaret’s, Westminster.55CJ ii. 9a-b; Procs. Short Parl. 237. This conspicuous demonstration of the House’s piety was in keeping with Sir William’s mood, for religion was at the forefront of his concerns in this Parliament. On 24 April he complained that prayers for the dead had been reintroduced, while on 29 April he sided with those who were most critical of the Laudian altar policies.56Aston’s Diary, 54, 89, 90. Along with most other MPs, he felt that the Commons should debate their grievances before turning to the issue of the supply requested by the king.57Aston’s Diary, 71, 80, 134; CJ ii. 12a-b.

That autumn, in accordance with Warwick’s wishes, Masham gained his place as a knight of the shire by swapping with Grimston’s father, Sir Harbottle*. As in the previous Parliament, he was asked to organise worship for the Commons in St Margaret’s, Westminster. As all MPs were to be expected to receive communion there as a test of their Protestantism, he would have helped administer that process had he not asked to be excused that task.58CJ ii. 24a, 32b, 39a. He was also named to the committee to investigate the numbers of Catholics in London and he supported other anti-Catholic measures.59CJ ii. 24b, 105b, 113b, 238b, 409a; Procs. LP vi. 214. To Masham, this concern about popery would have been an extension of his fears about episcopacy. At every step, he supported the moves to dismantle the Laudian innovations and to punish Archbishop William Laud and his episcopal supporters.60CJ ii. 44b, 52b, 75a, 84b, 91a, 136b, 139a, 156a, 157b; Procs. LP i. 260. Most notably, he was the person who on 3 June 1641 introduced the bill to repeal the 1640 Canons.61Procs. LP iv. 706, 708. That he presented the Essex petition of January 1641 calling for the abolition of episcopacy need not mean that he was yet prepared to support that idea, but, at the very least, he wanted severe limitations on the bishops’ powers.62Procs. LP i. 183.

Parallel to this was his support for the attacks on the more secular aspects of the personal rule of Charles I. When on 24 November 1640 John Pym* reported the articles of impeachment against the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), Masham moved that they be considered singly, a tactic which ensured that they were debated in detail, and he later served on the committee which proceeded with the impeachment.63Procs. LP i. 269; CJ ii. 98a. He spoke in debate against Lord Keeper Finch (Sir John Finch†) and Henry Percy*.64Northcote Note Bk. 85; Procs. LP i. 672, vi. 83. He disapproved of Ship Money.65CJ ii. 45b, 181b. On 15 May 1641 he moved that the Commons press ahead with their motions in favour of John Bastwick and William Prynne*.66Procs. LP iv. 394. On a more personal note, his complaints against Nathaniel Sykes for digging saltpetre in his dovecote widened into a more general attack on the abuses by the saltpetre men.67CJ ii. 181a, 184a; Procs. LP v. 295. In February 1642 he repaid the favour Warwick had shown him in the 1640 elections by supporting the moves to appoint the earl as lord high admiral.68Harl. 164, f. 288v.

As Parliament and the king drifted towards civil war, Masham probably had few difficulties in deciding to side with Parliament. He was a member of the committee which, in the wake of the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members in January 1642, prepared the declaration warning the kingdom to put itself into a posture of defence.69CJ ii. 372a. Five months later, when Parliament had felt it necessary to pass the Militia Ordinance as protection against the perceived threat from the king, Masham was one of the Essex MPs sent home to make sure that the ordinance was obeyed throughout Essex.70CJ ii. 605b. Having backed Parliament rather than the king, he would remain loyal to that choice until his death fourteen years later.

It fell to Masham to inform Parliament of the details of the riots at Colchester in August 1642.71PJ iii. 316. He and Sir Martin Lumley* were then asked to consult with Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, about the appropriate military response.72CJ ii. 736a. He was later appointed to the committee to prepare the articles of impeachment against Sir John Lucas, the courtier against whom the rioters had been protesting.73CJ ii. 741b, 743a. In the division on 30 September which was, in effect, a vote on whether to bail Lucas, Masham and Sir Thomas Barrington were the tellers for those who did not want him bailed.74CJ ii. 788b-789a. Their concern was probably that Lucas’s release would provoke renewed trouble in Colchester. On 3 October Masham and the other Essex deputy lieutenants were told by Parliament to enforce the Militia Ordinance.75LJ v. 382b-384b; Instructions agreed upon by the Lords and Commons (1642, E.121.1).

Masham was the MP who was asked to inform Matthew Newcomen that he was to preach the sermon for the Commons on 5 November 1642.76CJ ii. 794b, 835b. The choice of Masham for this task is easily explained by the fact that Newcomen was the vicar of Dedham, so the two men may well have known each other already. However, this was the start of what was to be a regular feature of Masham’s career in this Parliament, for on many occasions he would be asked to contact the preachers employed by the Commons. A particular favourite was Stephen Marshall, another Essex clergymen whom Masham probably knew very well.

Once the fighting began Masham took the lead in mobilising Essex for war. On 13 November 1642, when the king’s forces were threatening the capital, Masham was one of those authorised to raise forces in Essex for the defence of London.77CJ ii. 848b, 849b. In late December he was sent into Essex to help promote what became the Eastern Association.78CJ ii. 910a. In April 1643 he was included in the delegation who were to deliver to the earl of Essex a letter which had been received from the Essex deputy lieutenants and he, together with Barrington and Lumley, was then order to assist with recruitment there.79CJ iii. 41b, 45a. Two weeks later he and Lumley were dispatched to encourage the Essex troops stationed at Reading.80CJ iii. 64a. He was also one of the local MPs who travelled to Essex that June to consult about further recruitment.81CJ iii. 129b. The following month, however, the Commons felt that Masham would be more useful at Westminster than in Essex raising more cavalry forces, although in August 1643 he did attend a number of the meetings of the county committee in Essex.82CJ iii. 184a; SP28/227: Essex co. cttee. warrants, Aug. 1643. His appointment in 1644 as one of the commissioners for the supply of timber reflected the importance of Waltham Forest as a source for this essential commodity for the building of ships for the navy.83CJ iii. 399b, 430b; A. and O.

Masham’s personal commitment to the parliamentarian war effort was never in doubt. In June 1642 he had promised to supply four horses and he later agreed to lend £100.84PJ iii. 93, 476; Add. 18777, f. 109. He was one of those MPs who gave £50 in April 1644 in order to ensure that the artillery train which had been raised could leave for the front immediately.85CJ iii. 464a. He was therefore entitled to complain in December 1642 about those MPs who were ‘so ready to pretend for peace [that] being sent for they refuse to contribute anything towards it’.86Add. 18777, f. 103. He clearly saw military victory as the necessary precondition to any satisfactory settlement with the king. For that reason, he was generally willing to vote more money, troops and supplies for the army. He had little time for those in Huntingdonshire who in June 1644 complained about the burdensome exactions by the assessment collectors.87Harl. 166, f. 74v. He took the Covenant on 13 January 1644.88CJ iii. 365a; Harl. 165, f. 273. By late 1644 he was attending the Committee for Sequestrations and was formally added to this body (of which he would be an active member) in January 1645.89SP20/1, ff. 258, 274v, 462, 500, 507; SP20/2, f. 12; SP20/3, f. 38; CJ iv. 38a.

For the parliamentarians of Essex, the defence of the Isle of Ely was a particular concern as it provided the first line of security against any royalist advance into East Anglia. For that reason, Masham requested more money for those defences in early 1644.90Harl. 166, f. 13v. On 1 April of that year he reported the amendments which had been made to the bill introduced for that purpose.91CJ iii. 443a; Harl. 166, f. 42. Thirteen months later he tried unsuccessfully to convince the Commons to reinforce the garrison there by deploying a regiment of horse.92Harl. 166, f. 211v. Aylesbury was also a strategic stronghold protecting the eastern counties, so in January 1644 Masham had persuaded the Commons to send more gunpowder for the garrison there.93Harl. 165, f. 284; CJ iii. 379b.

One recurring interest for Masham was Ireland. He had been the person who, in Pym’s absence, had raised the issue of the Irish rebellion on 2 November 1641 when news of it had first reached London.94D’Ewes (C), 72; CJ ii. 303a. The plight of those Protestants who then fled to England had his full sympathy.95CJ ii. 713a. He had invested £600 in the Irish Adventure and now wanted to see the rebels crushed as soon as possible.96Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 186. He was named to Parliament’s main executive for Ireland, the Committee for Irish Affairs, on its establishment in September 1642, and in debate he seconded a motion by one of its leading members, Robert Reynolds, proposing that commissioners be sent to Ireland to ensure that the money they were sending was being spent properly.97CJ ii. 750b; Harl. 163, f. 383v. In April 1643 he was added to Sir Henry Vane I’s committee for Irish affairs after similar concerns had been raised.98Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane I’; CJ iii. 47b. Masham would support several other initiatives during the mid-1640s to raise money for the war-effort in Ireland.99CJ iv. 521a, 641b.

The death of his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Barrington, with whom he had worked closely in promoting the parliamentarian cause in Essex, created a vacancy among the MPs who sat in the Westminster Assembly. On 28 September 1644 the Commons selected Masham as Sir Thomas’s replacement. The Lords waited ten weeks before agreeing, however.100CJ iii. 642a, 717a, 718a; LJ vii. 89b; The Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly 1643-52, ed. C. van Dixhoorn (Oxford, 2012), iii. 483. Masham certainly supported further reformation, backing a wide range of godly measures, including legislation to repress sinful behaviour, to maintain preaching ministers and to regulate the universities.101CJ iv. 35b, 97b, 114b, 173a, 174a, 350b, 373a, 502a, v. 11a, 47a. He was in favour of the appointment of elders in London and was himself named as an elder of his local classis in Essex.102CJ iv. 218a; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 380. In 1646 he was included as one of the commissioners to prevent scandalous offenders receiving the sacrament.103CJ iv. 562b; A. and O. He sat on the Committee for Plundered Ministers and was the first person named to the committee created in June 1647 to investigate whether that Committee had made any mistakes in its presentations to livings.104CJ iv. 545b; v. 228b. He approved of the sale of the bishops’ lands.105CJ iv. 276a; v. 99b. All this suggests that, when it came to religion, he was a Presbyterian who favoured a strong state church.

The proposal for the New Model army was a sensitive subject in Essex, as in all the counties within the Eastern Association, but Masham seems to have been willing to see its advantages. In April 1645 he was first-named to the committee which was to arrange an advance of £500 on the Essex assessments in order to make immediate payments to those army officers who were to be disbanded.106CJ iv. 106a. A month later he was part of the delegation to persuade the city of London to advance money to pay the army.107CJ iv. 135a. He was also keen to see that the Scots were paid promptly.108CJ iv. 41a, 173b. Measures for the better defence of the Eastern Association, intended to reassure those counties, were reported by him to the Commons on 21 May 1645.109CJ iv. 149b. When the Commons wanted the Essex county standing committee to know the details of the forces raised by them for the New Model army, they got Lumley to write to Masham with the information.110CJ iv. 192b. Two months later, in September 1645, he was one of those MPs who wrote to the county standing committee explaining that 800 horses would need to be sent from Essex to Lincolnshire.111CJ iv. 265b. The passage of the bill to encourage the collection of the Essex assessment arrears probably owed much to his efforts.112CJ iv. 281b, 282b, 283a. He was well aware how onerous some of these demands were. He told one of his tenants in 1646 that

My occasions for money are great, living here at much expense for the public service, and if my rents (which are much lessened by the great taxes) are not duly paid I shall suffer much.113CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 692.

If he had any discernment, he would also have known that he had been relatively lucky, his estates having escaped the worst effects of civil war experienced in other parts of the country.

Despite his clear support for Presbyterian forms of church government, Masham was by now a political Independent. In February 1647 he was a teller with the Indepenndent grandee Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire against depriving the House of their political ally John Wylde by appointing him to ride circuit in Lincolnshire.114CJ v. 76a-b. Masham was subsequently among the group of mostly Independent MPs who fled to the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July. On their return he sat on the committee for the bill which cancelled all the measures which had been passed in their absence.115CJ v. 278a. On 27 September he carried up to the Lords the order which paved the way for the election of a new lord mayor, John Warner, a crucial step in the Independents’ attempt to reassert control over London.116CJ v. 318b. Other measures to prevent renewed disturbances in the capital also had his support.117CJ v. 322a, 360a, 363b. That autumn he was among Independents who supported a further effort to negotiate with the king.118CJ v. 327b, 336a, 351b. This was before the king’s escape to Carisbrooke which may have made Masham less willing to trust him.

Amid the competing pressures at this time, Masham probably had some sympathy with the army. On 7 December, when the big issue was the Four Bills proposed by the Independent-dominated Lords, the Commons appointed a committee to compile a list of the army’s demands. Care of this business was particularly referred to Masham.119CJ v. 376b. Yet there was a limit to his support for the army, for 13 days later he opposed the proposal that reversions from the confiscated estates of the deans and cathedral chapters should be used to underwrite the arrears owed to the army.120CJ v. 394a. As for the Scots, the departure of the Scottish commissioners in January 1648 only made Masham more inclined to be obstructive. On 26 February he opposed those who wanted to consider their latest communication and two days later he was indifferent towards their concerns about religious toleration.121CJ v. 472b, 473a.

By the spring of 1648 the first signs of the trouble to come in the south east were already evident. On 27 April Masham was one of the Essex MPs appointed to prevent the planned meeting of Essex inhabitants at Stratford Langhorne on 4 May. He was also one of those instructed to write to the local militia commanders when there were fears of riots at Colchester. Then, when the discontented of Essex nevertheless managed to circulate their own statement of intent, some of those same MPs were ordered to alert Warwick so that he could take steps to ensure that unrest of the sort already breaking out elsewhere did not spread to Essex.122CJ v. 546b, 550b, 563a. In the meantime, Masham was a teller in the division on 28 April for those who wanted to enforce rigorously the Vote of No Addresses.123CJ v. 547a. Discussion of possible settlements with the king were a dangerous distraction at a time when the fighting seemed likely to resume. Others in the Commons shared Masham’s uncompromising mood and on 1 June he was added to the Derby House Committee.124CJ v. 578b; LJ x. 295b.

Masham’s immediate concern was that the royalist uprising in Kent had spread following the decision by the 1st earl of Norwich (Sir George Goring†) to cross the Thames and march into Essex. The county standing committee, including Masham, met in emergency session at Chelmsford on 4 June. This proved to be a mistake as a force of local royalists burst into the meeting and took the committee hostage. Masham, as the most prominent person present, was a particular prize. Once the royalists had occupied Colchester, Masham and the other prisoners were transferred there. Their plight then became a major national issue. One royalist newspaper sneeringly reported that Norwich had ‘laid him [Masham] up in a garret’ and that

to cure him of his madness (for sure rebellion is lunacy) keeps him fasting and dark, and now and then brings him out, to make sport, the soldiers to cause mirth, (presuming upon his hunger) tying a crust to a string, make him leap for a snap at it, which hath so enraged the rebels at Westminster, (on consideration how soon it may be their own case) that they have voted all delinquents to a speedy trial, who have not already bought their peace …125Mercurius Bellicus no. 22 (20-27 June 1648), 7 (E.449.44).

This alluded to the indemnity ordinance passed on 5 June, which was actually intended by Parliament as a concession to secure the prisoners’ release.126CJ v. 586a. When this failed, several other tactics were employed. Most promising was the decision to authorise Sir Thomas Fairfax* to take an equal number of royalist hostages as bargaining counters. As Masham’s release was regarded as being particularly important, Bishop Matthew Wren of Ely, Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Cleveland, and John Ashburnham* were in turn offered in exchange.127CJ v. 589b, 601b, 609b, 611b, 612b, 613a, 618a, 629b, 635a, 640a, 649b, 650b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 110, 112, 120, 124, 125. The deal involving Ashburnham went ahead and Masham was handed over. He was back in London by 21 August, when he finally took up his place on the Derby House Committee, and later that week he again attending the Commons.128CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 248; CJ v. 678a, 681b..

These experiences presumably coloured his attitude towards the rebels. It may have been for symbolic reasons that he headed the list of those nominated on 1 November to the committee to consider the bill to sequester the delinquents’ estates in Essex, although the previous day he had been willing to concede that Protestant delinquents should be allowed to compound.129CJ vi. 66a, 67a. He wanted Henry Jermyn* to be one of the seven men exempted from the pardon proposed by the deal under negotiation with the king and may have felt that there should have been more of those exemptions.130CJ vi. 71a, 71b. On 25 November he was given leave to return to Essex to help collect the assessment for the army and, although Otes was conveniently close to London, he may have been absent at the time the Commons was purged by the army.131CJ vi. 87b.

Masham’s attitude towards the events of December 1648 and January 1649 seems to have been ambivalent. He was named as one of the judges to try the king but he refused to serve and it was not until 8 February 1649 that he was readmitted to the Commons.132A. and O.; CJ vi. 133b. His colleagues immediately added him to the Committee for the Army.133CJ vi. 133b. Whatever his own feelings about the regicide, he was willing to serve the republic and later that year he sat on the committee on the bill that formalised the abolition of the monarchy.134CJ vi. 158a. He also helped block moves to allow Princess Elizabeth to go into exile abroad and supported the sale of the late king’s properties.135CJ vi. 195a; vii. 112a, 245a, 250b.

Masham’s prominence in the Commons made him an obvious choice for election to the new council of state in February 1649, although he was one of those who had qualms about taking the Engagement in order to be allowed to take their seat on it.136CJ vi. 141a; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 9. (This did not prevent him later sitting on the Commons’ committees on the legislation which compelled a general subscription of the Engagement.137CJ vi. 321b, 326b.) Over the next four years he would be an energetic member of this body.138CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. xlviii-lxxv; 1650, pp. xv-xli; 1651, pp. xxv-xxxv; 1651-2, pp. xxxv-xlvi; 1652-3, pp. xxviii-xxxiii. He also served on many of its sub-committees. In October 1652 he acted as the council’s temporary chairman in the absence of Sir William Constable*.139CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 454, 455. When it was proposed in November 1651 that this chairmanship and those of any of the Commons’ committees should rotate each month, he had been teller for those in Parliament who opposed the amendment which opened the way for chairmen to be reappointed at the end of each month.140CJ vii. 43a-b. His conduct as a councillor seems, on the whole, to have met with approval among the parliamentary colleagues as he continued to be re-elected to the council by comfortable margins.141CJ vi. 361b-362a, 532a; vii. 42a, 220a-b; A. and O.

On occasion he was expected to act as the council’s voice in the Commons. The proposal from the council in July 1649 recommending that a loan of £150,000 should be raised to finance the Irish campaign was conveyed by Masham to the Commons and he was then included on the delegation to negotiate for it with the corporation of London.142CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 219; CJ vi. 249b. He helped draft the 1650 militia bill and the following January he informed the Commons that the council felt that, in view of the continuing danger of rebellion, it ought to kept in force for a further three months.143CSP Dom. 1650, p. 167; 1651, p. 24; CJ vi. 417a, 528b. In the meantime, he had repeatedly encouraged MPs to give consideration to the bill for relief of oppressed tenants.144CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 442, 480; 1651, p. 16. When the council wanted to close the loopholes in the existing legislation against abuses in quartering by the army, Masham raised the matter for them.145CJ vii. 48b. In February 1652 the Commons heard the details of the latest dispatches from the naval force off Barbados from him.146CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 143; CJ vii. 90b.

Often the reason why he was chosen to speak on the council’s behalf was because the matter in question had an Essex connection. As a councillor, he took a close interest in the plans to repair Tilbury Fort, so it is unsurprising that he should have been asked to report on this to Parliament, although, in the event, it was his Essex colleague Sir Henry Mildmay* who did so.147CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 158, 166. When the council wanted to press the Commons into taking a decision about the Suffolk and Essex clothiers, Masham was the man for the job.148CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 506; CJ vi. 358a. When the Essex county standing committee wrote to the council in August 1651 about the militia, he was used to refer the matter to the House.149CSP Dom. 1651, p. 394; CJ vii. 9b. The bill to reform abuses in the cloth trade was a council initiative introduced by him in the closing weeks of the Parliament.150CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 140. During 1649 he had been one of the more regular attenders of meetings of the Eastern Association Committee at Westminster.151SP28/251, warrants, Mar.-Oct. 1649.

Sometimes the Commons used Masham as their link with the council. In October 1649, having appointed him to draft the declaration for the day of thanksgiving to mark the victory, they asked Masham to inform the council that they should congratulate Cromwell on the capture of Drogheda.152CJ vi. 301a-b, 305b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 326. He and Thomas Scot I* were used to get the council to investigate a seditious pamphlet in February 1650.153CJ vi. 354b. Council business was, however, only one aspect of his activity in Parliament. Even more than before, he was one of those used on a regular basis as a teller, performing that role in 40 divisions under the Rump.

One of the major issues of these years was how harshly to treat the defeated royalists. Masham was certainly unsympathetic in 1649 to the proposal to delay the death sentence imposed on Warwick’s younger brother, the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†).154CJ vi. 159b. This could mean that he still harboured grudges against the 1648 rebels. On the other hand, he disagreed that Sir William Davenant ought to be tried by the high court of justice.155CJ vi. 436b. In January 1651 he opposed plans to use the existing committee on obstructions to the sale of delinquents’ estates as the committee to hear appeals against the new bill to implement such sales. He was then named the committee created to hear those appeals.156CJ vi. 528a. On the issue of when these new sequestrations should be dated from, he took the more lenient line that they should not be backdated all the way to 1642.157CJ vi. 536a.

On religion, Masham’s preferred policy was for a strong reformed state church and he was clearly suspicious of the moves towards greater religious freedom. Particularly significant was his role as teller in the divisions on 1 June 1652 on the articles to be offered to the Irish forces in Leinster, as it shows that he disapproved of the proposal to promise freedom from religious persecution.158CJ vii. 138a. He encouraged the moves in 1649 to punish those clergymen who were attempting to disaffect the population, while, at the same time, backing moves to provide financial support for godly preaching.159CJ vi. 187a, 196a, 382b. The bill for the better maintenance of a preaching minister at Colchester in 1650 was probably a measure particularly dear to his heart.160CJ vi. 416a. When the bill was being passed to sell off dean and chapter lands, he was one of those who made sure that the lands which had been used to provide suitable preachers for Westminster Abbey were exempted.161CJ vi. 197b. The propagation of the gospel, whether in New England or in Wales, had his support.162CJ vi. 231a, 336a, 352a. He is likely to have played a leading role on the committees which considered the 1649 and 1650 bills for the appointment of clergymen to ecclesiastical livings.163CJ vi. 263b, 359a. And as an active member of the committee for regulating the universities, he was forward in the work of settling a godly preaching ministry.164CJ vi. 388b; vii. 141a; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16. As before, he was regularly used to liaise with those clergymen asked to preach before the Commons and he remained keen to promote the fast days fixed by Parliament.165CJ vi. 152b, 158b, 190a, 314b, 317a, 374a, 412b, 413a, 414a, 423b, 544b, 581b, 582a; vii. 20a, 198a, 251b, 252a.

Some of his political friendships are evident from the records. He was often associated with Mildmay. He supported the election of Sir John Danvers* to the council of state in February 1650 and the two of them worked together on other occasions.166CJ vi. 197b, 232a, 429a, 512a; vii. 150b. When his wife’s son-in-law, Oliver St John*, indicated in early 1651 that he did not wish to go as ambassador to the United Provinces, Masham was teller for the minority of MPs who were willing to accept St John’s request.167CJ vi. 528b. His appointments to the Committee of Navy and Customs and the committee for excise (29 May 1649) and, later, to the committee on admiralty stores (13 Feb. 1651) after the bill on the powers of the lord high admiral was referred to it, no doubt reflected Warwick’s personal interest in these areas.168CJ vi. 219b, 534a. Masham supported the land grants to Philip Skippon* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*).169CJ vi. 516b; vii. 49b.

Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump in April 1653 terminated Masham’s membership of the council of state and, for the time being, he withdrew from national politics. This did not mean that he was estranged from the protectorate set up under his kinsman. Masham was happy to retain his local offices, remaining active as a justice of the peace until at least late 1655. From 1654 he held office as custos rotolorum for Essex.170Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 6-70. He was also one of the ‘ejectors’ appointed to remove scandalous clergymen from their livings in Essex by the ordinance of August 1654.171A. and O. This continuing prominence in local politics no doubt served him well when he came to stand for one of the Essex seats in the 1654 Parliament.

No sooner had the 1654 Parliament assembled than Masham reverted back to one of his old roles. On its second day (4 Sept.) he was appointed to help draft the declaration for the next fast day and was asked thank to Stephen Marshall for the sermon he had preached when they had met for the first time the previous day.172CJ vii. 366a. Three months later he headed the group of MPs who consulted with a number of eminent clergymen on the possible contents of the proposed articles of faith.173CJ vii. 396a, 399b. For that reason, he was also included on the committees to enumerate damnable heresies and to act against the heretical books by John Biddle.174CJ vii. 399b, 400a. The bill to abolish purveyance was largely a formality, but Masham still found himself being second-named to the committee which considered it.175CJ vii. 407b. His other noteworthy contribution in this Parliament was to act as teller in two divisions on the electoral franchises during the debates on the bill for settling the government. On both occasions, the issue was whether the right to vote in the elections for county MP should be extended to copyholders. Masham appears to have disapproved of the idea.176CJ vii. 411a, 420b.

By late March 1656 Masham was unwell.177TSP iv. 644 He was also anxious about the lands in Ireland which he, along with Sir John Barrington*, Sir Gilbert Gerard*, Sir Richard Everard*, Sir William Waller* and Edward Turnor*, had been allocated as their share in the Irish Adventure. These lands had been granted separately to Edward Dendy* and the two sides now prepared to take the dispute to court.178Eg. 2648, ff. 251-2, 268-9; Eg. 2651, ff. 221-3, 224-229; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 117, 353; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 596-7, 834. Masham did not live to see the outcome of the case. He was dead by 1 July 1656, when the probate of his estates was settled.179PROB11/256/670. His son, William*, had predeceased him, so his lands and the baronetcy passed to his senior grandson, also called William. Another of his grandsons, Sir Francis†, the husband of Damaris Masham and the patron of John Locke, sat as an MP, as did his great-grandson, Samuel†, who, as the husband of Abigail Masham, was raised to the peerage of Baron Masham of Otes in 1712.180HP Commons 1690-1715. The male line descended from Sir William died out in 1776.