Streynsham Master

Sir Streynsham Master (28 October 1640 – 28 April 1724) was an English colonial administrator who was one of the 17th-century pioneers of the English East India Company. He served as the Agent of Madras from 27 January 1678 to 3 July 1681, and is credited with having introduced the first administrative reforms in the Madras Government. He banned sati and prohibited the burning of a Hindu widow in 1680 in what is the first official British response to sati. He made English the sole official language and language of court in the Madras Presidency, replacing the Portuguese, Tamil and Malayalam languages. Returning to England, in 1692 he bought the Codnor Castle estate and for the rest of his life divided his time between Derbyshire and London. Early career Streynsham Master had a distinguished career in the East India Company (EIC) right from his early days. He served as the Acting President of the company's factory (trading post) at Surat during the visit of the factory's President Gerald Aungier to the new colony at Bombay. After the return of Aungier, Master served for some time as a member of the EIC Council. In 1670 he led the English in the successful defence of his company in Surat against the Marathas. In 1676, even before the then Agent Sir William Langhorne's removal from power, Master was nominated in advance as the next Agent of Madras in the case of emergency. In the meantime, until the end of Langhorne's tenure, Master served for a time as the Agent of the company's factory at Masulipatnam and then Bengal, where he was tasked with introducing a new administrative system for the factories on the Hooghly River; lastly he was sent back to Fort St. George to take office as the second member of the EIC Council.