Mascarene came to meet him at Chebuctoo, and was sworn in senior member of the council. Cornwall is reported that 'no regiment in any service was ever reduced to the condition in which I found this unfortunate battalion.' In 1751 Mascarene was sent by Cornwallis on special duty to New England, and was employed with General Shirley in conciliating the Indian tribes of Western Acadia. Soon after he retired on account of age, and resided at Boston until his death. He became a major-general in 1758, and died at Boston, Massachusetts, on 22 Jan. 1760. He appears to have been a man of considerable education and talent, whose ability and uprightness won for him the confidence of the French Acadians and Indians alike. No man ever served his country better, and none received less support or reward from home (Murdoch). A portrait of him in armour is extant.
Mascarene married Elizabeth Perry, a Boston lady, and by her left a son and daughter, from whom the colonial families of Hutchinson and Snelling are descended.
[Home Office Mil. Entry Books, ix. 113, x. 320, and Papers relating to New England and Nova Scotia in Public Record Office, London; Beamish Murdoch's Hist. Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1857), i. 425, ii. passim, 14–391; Collections of the Historical Soc. of Nova Scotia, 1878–9, vol. ii.; Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 19069–71, 32818 f. 7..]
MASCHIART, MICHAEL (1544–1598), Latin poet, born in St. Thomas's parish, Salisbury, in 1544, became scholar of Winchester College in 1557, and a probationary fellow of New College, Oxford, 29 Jan. 1560, and perpetual fellow in 1562. He was admitted B.C.L. in 1567, and licensed D.C.L. 13 Oct. 1573, and was made an advocate of Doctors' Commons in 1575. In April 1572 he was appointed by his college vicar of Writtle in Essex, where he died and was buried in December 1598. Wood calls him ‘a most excellent Latin poet of his time, … an able civilian, and excellent in all kind of human learning;’ but it seems doubtful whether the ‘Poemata Varia’ attributed to him were ever published. Camden quotes from him a description of Clarendon Park, near Salisbury (Camden, Britannia, Holland's translation, 1610, p. 250).
[Kirby's Winchester Scholars, p. 134; Coote's Civilians, p. 52; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 673, 738; Wood's Fasti, pp. 179, 194; Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, vi. 618; Boase's Register of University of Oxford, i. 268; Britton's Beauties of England and Wales, xv. 189; Antiquitates Sarisburienses, 1777, p. 238.]
MASERES, FRANCIS (1731–1824), mathematician, historian, and reformer, born in London 15 Dec. 1731, was descended from a family originally French, which came over to England after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His father, Peter Abraham Maseres, settled as a physician in Broad Street, Soho, London, and then moved to a house in Rathbone Place; his mother was Magdalene, daughter of Francis du Pratt du Clareau. He was educated at Kingston-upon-Thames by the Rev. Richard Wooddeson, who also trained George Hardinge, Edward Lovibond, George Steevens and Gilbert Wakefield, and on 4 July 1748 he was admitted at Clare College, Cambridge, as pensioner and pupil to Mr. Courtail, his brother, Peter Maseres, being also admitted on the same day. They graduated B.A. in 1752, Peter being first junior optime in the tripos of that year, while Francis obtained the distinction of fourth wrangler in the same list. On the institution in 1752 of chancellor's classical medals by the Duke of Newcastle, Francis won the first medal and received it from the duke in person. On 23 Jan. 1752 he was admitted a scholar of the foundation of Joseph Diggons, and on 24 Sept. 1756—after he had taken the degree of M.A. in 1755—he became a fellow of Lord Exeter's foundation. This fellowship he resigned in August 1759, although he might have kept it a year longer, and this step, as well as the length of time during which he had to wait for these prizes, no doubt arose from the fact that he was not in pecuniary need. In 1750 Maseres was admitted at the Inner Temple, and in 1758 he was called to the bar from that inn, where he afterwards became bencher 1774, reader 1781, and treasurer 1782. It is life was bound up with the Temple; he is introduced by Charles Lamb in his 'Essay on the Old Benchers of the Inner Temple' as walking 'in the costume of the reign of George the Second,' and he persevered until the end of his days in wearing the 'three-cornered hat, tye wig, and ruffles.' His rooms were at 5 King s Bench Walk, where he lived in a style described by Lamb in a letter written to Thomas Manning [q. v.] in April 1801, and although out of term he used to dine at his house in Rathbone Place, he always returned to the Temple to sleep. For a time he went the western circuit, but, as he confessed, with little success, and he then became a common pleader in the city of London. From 1766 to 1709 he filled the post of attorney-general of Quebec with such zeal and dignity that on his return to England he was requested by the protestant settlers in that city to act as their agent. Thomas Hutchinson called upon
