Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/392

Basset Houlme), which, however, was wrested from him on Henry's death. He appears in the Pipe Roll of 1129–30 as succeeding to his father's circuit, and as joint sheriff with Alberic de Vere for eleven counties. He married Maud, daughter of Geoffrey Ridel, the justiciary, and founded, with her, the priory of Laund, Leicestershire. Foss maintains (from the Pipe Roll of 1 Hen. II) that he was still living in 1154, but this roll does not exist, and he is mentioned as dead in the ‘De Contemptu’ of Henry of Huntingdon, which is attributed to 1145.

[Rot. Pip. 31 Hen. I; Ordericus Vitalis, xii. 26; Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls series); Dugdale's Baronage, i. 378; Foss's Judges of England, 1848, i. 101.]  BASSET, THOMAS (d. 1182?), judge, was son of Gilbert Basset (presumed to be a younger son of Ralph Basset, the justiciar (d. 1127?) [q. v.] He received a grant of the lordship of Hedendon, Oxfordshire, for services in war, and served sheriff of Oxfordshire, 1163–4. In 1167–8 he was an itinerant justice for Essex and Hertfordshire, and in 1169 appears at the Exchequer. In 1175 he was again an itinerant justice ( ii. 90) and in close attendance on the court, as he continued to be till 1181, and was specially named as a justice itinerant on one of the new circuits, 10 April 1179 He is last mentioned in August 1181, and at the close of 1182 he had been succeeded by his son Gilbert.

[Dugdale's Baronage, i. 383; Foss's Judges of England, 1848, i. 188; Eyton's Court and Itinerary of Henry II.]  BASSET, WILLIAM (d. 1185?), judge, was a younger son of Richard Basset [see, d. 1154?], and grandson of Ralph Basset, who died about 1127. He acted as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, 1163–1170 (Rot. Pip. Hen. II), till displaced, by the inquest of sheriffs, in 1170 (Pip. 19 Hen. II), and as sheriff of Lincolnshire 1177–84. He held pleas as a justice itinerant from 1168 to 1182 (Foss says wrongly till 1180), and sat in the Curia Regis, when not otherwise employed, from Michaelmas 1168 to 31 May 1185 (Foss says, wrongly, till 1184), after which he appears no longer. He settled at Sapcote, Leicestershire, and was father of Simon Basset, who appears as a justice itinerant in 1197–8.

[Dugdale's Baronage, i. 382; Foss's Judges of England, 1848, i. 189, 340; Eyton's Court and Itinerary of Henry II.]  BASSET, WILLIAM (d. 1249?), judge, was possibly son of Simon Basset, of Sapcote [see, d. 1185? ad fin.], but his parentage is uncertain. Forfeited for rebellion in 1216, he was restored on returning to his allegiance in 1217. He assisted as a justiciar, in assessing the fifteenth for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in 1225 (Fœdera, i. 177), and was appointed a justice itinerant for these counties 27 May 1226. He again appears as a justice itinerant in 1227 and 1232, and he probably died about July 1249, when Robert, his heir, did homage. Another William Basset was an advocate under Edward II and Edward III, and was elevated to the bench of the Common Pleas about 1337. On 18 Oct. 1341 he was transferred to the King's Bench, where he sat till about 1350.

[Foss's Judges of England, 1848, ii. 222, iii. 394; Year Books.]  BASSET, WILLIAM (1644–1695), divine, son of Thomas Basset, minister of Great Harborough in Warwickshire, was baptised there 22 Oct. 1644, became a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1660, and afterwards a demy of Magdalen College in the same university. He graduated M.A., and took orders, was beneficed first in Surrey, afterwards (1671) at Brinklow in his native county, and in July 1683 was presented by the Salters' Company to the rectory of St. Swithin in London. His death occurred in the beginning of the year 1695–6, as he was succeeded on 25 March 1696 in his rectory of St. Swithin by John Clark, M.A.

In addition to several sermons, he published: 1. ‘Two Letters on Alterations in the Liturgy.’ 2. A ‘Vindication’ of the previous work, 1689. 3. ‘An Answer to the Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians,’ Lond. 1693, 8vo. John Biddle's ‘History,’ to which this is a reply, appeared anonymously in 1687.

[Newcourt's Repertorium Ecclesiasticum, i. 544; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (ed. Bliss), iv. 779; Birch's Life of Abp. Tillotson, 2nd edit. 194; Oxenham's Introd. to An Eirenicon of the Eighteenth Century, 19; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Bloxam's Register of Magd. Coll. Oxford, v. 251.]  BASSINGBOURNE, HUMPHREY (fl. 1206), was an itinerant justice in the year 1206, when certain fines were acknowledged before him and Richard de Seing at St. Edmund's, Cambridge, and Bedford. On this occasion he is called Humphrey, archdeacon of Salisbury, and Foss has identified this Humphrey with the Humphrey de Bassingbourne who, according to Le Neve, was archdeacon of Sarum in various years from 1188 to 1222. The Rev. W. H. Jones, however, in his careful work, ‘Fasti Ecclesiæ Sarisberi-