Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/393

Bassnett ensis,’ remarks that there were several archdeacons of the name of Humphrey in the diocese of Salisbury about this time, and that Le Neve is possibly confusing Humphrey, who was archdeacon of Wiltshire in 1214, with another Humphrey who was archdeacon of Salisbury in 1222. We learn from an entry in the Close Rolls for 1208 that in April this year the goods of the archdeacon of Sarum, which had been confiscated at the time of the interdict, were restored to him; and from the same authority we learn that in 1216 Humphrey, archdeacon of Sarum, received letters of protection from the king. It was probably just previous to this that he had incurred the king's displeasure, and been obliged to pay a fine of one hundred marks and a palfrey as the price of his restoration to the king's favour.

[Foss, ii. 37; Jones's Fasti Eccles. Sarisber. 158, 169; Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 622; Roll. Claus. John, i. 113, 251; Rot. de Finibus, 17 John, 582.]  BASSNETT, CHRISTOPHER (1677?–1744), nonconformist minister whose birthplace is unknown, is believed by Wilson to be related to Samuel Bassnett of Coventry (whose father was mayor in 1625). Samuel Bassnett was ejected from the lectureship of St. Michael's in 1662 as a congregationalist, and removed to Atherstone in 1665, where he died. Christopher entered the Rev. Richard Frankland's academy at Rathmel as student for the ministry on 1 April 1696. He was an intimate friend of Matthew Henry, who says in a manuscript diary, 20 July 1709, ‘recommended Mr. Basnet to Liverpool,’ and 1 Aug. ‘he is inclined to accept.’ He ministered to the congregation at Kaye or Key Street, Liverpool, then included in the Warrington presbyterian classis (meeting-house opened on 24 Nov. 1707). He was incapacitated by illness from 23 March 1711 to 26 Jan. 1712. He married, on 9 Feb. 1713, Mrs. Cheney of Manchester, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Eaton (d. 1729). He assisted in establishing a school for the free education of poor children in Liverpool in 1716. He had John Brekell as a colleague from 1728. He died on 22 July 1744, æt. 68. Bassnett was a homely, useful preacher, with puritan unction. He published: 1. ‘Zebulun's Blessing opened and applied, &c.,’ 1714 (eight sermons to seafaring men and traders, occasioned by the construction of a new dock, and memorable for the comment on Luke xiv. 20: ‘But why could not the fool bring his wife along with him?’ &c., p. 55); and 2. ‘Church Officers and their Mission,’ &c., 1717 (sermon at ordination of Henry Winder and Benjamin Mather at St. Helen's).

[Funeral Sermon (unprinted) by H. Winder, some of Bassnett's papers, and Minutes of Warrington Class, 1719–22, among Winder's MSS. in Renshaw Street Chapel, Liverpool; Wilson's MSS. in Dr. Williams's Library (esp. Biog. Coll. i. 99, Prot. Diss. Vitæ, 71, 73); Key Street Bapt. Register in Somerset House; Toulmin's Hist. View of Prot. Diss. 1814, p. 581; Thom's Liverpool Churches and Chapels, 1854, p. 6.]  BASTARD, JOHN POLLEXFEN (1756–1816), member of parliament for Devon, was born in 1756 at Kitley, near Plymouth. His family, settled in Devonshire since the Conquest, obtained the Kitley property about the end of the seventeenth century by the marriage of William Bastard with the heiress of Pollexfen of Kitley. John Pollexfen Bastard was the son of another William Bastard, who, as colonel of the East Devonshire militia, saved the arsenal of Plymouth when it was threatened by the approach of the French fleet in August 1779, and was gazetted a baronet on 4 Sept. following, but the title was never assumed by himself or his heirs. On the death of his father in 1782, Bastard succeeded to the family possessions, and to the colonelcy of the East Devonshire militia. In 1799 he prevented the destruction of the Plymouth docks and dockyards in a sudden revolt of the workmen. Without waiting for a requisition, he marched his regiment against the insurgents, and brought their rioting to an end. He received the thanks of the king and the ministry. He represented Truro in the House of Commons in 1783–4 and Devonshire from 1784 until his death, a period of thirty-two years, and approved Pitt's foreign policy, whilst occasionally opposing his domestic measures. In 1815 he went to Italy for his health, being conveyed in a vessel of the royal navy to Leghorn, where he died on 4 April 1816. His remains, brought back in a man-of-war, were buried in the family vault at Yealmpton, near Kitley, on 16 June, 1816. Colonel Bastard was twice married, but left no issue.

[Prince's Worthies of Devon, 1810; Gent. Mag. 1816; Généalogie de la Maison de Bastard, originaire du Comté Nantais, existant encore en Guienne, au Maine, en Bretagne et en Devonshire, fol., Paris, 1847.]  BASTARD, THOMAS (1566–1618), satirist and divine, the fortunes of whose family in England and France are traced in the privately printed ‘Généalogie de la Maison de Bastard’ (Paris, 1847) from the eleventh century to our own day, was born at Blandford, Dorsetshire, in 1566. The date is derived from the Oxford matriculation register,