BASSET, Thomas

We cannot be certain that Thomas was the son of William Basset of Guildford, for he was not mentioned in William’s will,5 Reg. Chichele, ii. 432-3, 639. but the relationship seems likely, for he was heir to William’s wife Agnes Wintershall. Agnes herself was coheir with her sister Joan (wife successively to William Weston† and William Catton†) of the estates of their brother Thomas, who died in 1420,6 Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 320-1, 375; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 504-5; iv. 818-19, 880-1; CFR, xiv. 369. thus acquiring as her share of the Wintershall estates the manors of Burgham and Clandon in Surrey and Frobury in Kingsclere and a moiety of that of Eastleigh in Hampshire. These properties Agnes placed in the hands of feoffees chosen from among the local gentry in 1436.7 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 62-63. She died six years later, whereupon certainly Burgham and Frobury and probably the other holdings too passed to Thomas Basset,8 VCH Hants, iv. 255. Care has been taken to distinguish our Thomas from several namesakes living at Coulsdon, Surr. A Thomas Basset of Coulsdon had been among those required to take the oath against peace-breakers in 1434; Agnes Basset had sued Thomas Basset of Coulsdon, franklin, for a debt of £5 in 1438; a husbandman of this name was pardoned outlawry in 1445; and in 1450, in the immediate aftermath of Cade’s rebellion, Thomas the elder, Thomas the younger and John Basset, all yeomen of Coulsdon, received royal pardons: CP40/708, rot. 281; CPR, 1429-36, p. 381; 1441-6, p. 380; 1446-52, p. 342. her presumed son. It was as ‘of Burgham, Surrey, esquire, a coheir of Thomas Wintershall’ that our MP took out a pardon on 3 Nov. 1446; his cousin and coheir John Weston II* had done likewise shortly before.9 C67/39, mm. 13, 23.

Basset entered the royal household at an unknown date before 1441, becoming an esquire of the hall and chamber, and although no particular marks of favour were shown him by Henry VI in the way of grants of offices and annuities he remained loyal to him until the end of his reign.10 E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Basset attested the shire elections held at Guildford for the Parliaments of 1442, 1447 and February 1449, before himself being chosen to represent the county in the Parliament summoned for November following, at a time when the King’s ministers had much need of support in the Commons. During Basset’s year as escheator of Surrey and Sussex in 1453-4 the King became mentally incapacitated, and in November 1454 ordinances were drawn up for the regulation of the Household, reducing the number of people required to wait on him. Nevertheless, Basset was among the 12 ‘squiers of attendaunce’ retained in Henry’s service.11 PPC, vi. 224. That he continued to be acceptable to the Lancastrian regime is also indicated by his appointments in the late 1450s to ad hoc commissions, and as a sheriff. In those years, too, he occasionally appeared in the deeds of others, for example, as one of the recipients of the goods and chattels of a Guildford mercer, by grant of July 1457.12 CCR, 1454-61, p. 399. Even so, he was not regularly chosen as a feoffee by the gentry of Surrey, and his return to the Coventry Parliament of 1459 probably says more about his place at Henry VI’s court than about any significant links with other local landowners.

Henry VI’s deposition led inevitably to Basset’s ejection from the Household. He took out a pardon from Edward IV on 8 Feb. 1462 (as ‘of Burgham, esquire, formerly of Guildford’, and referring to his offices as sheriff and escheator under the deposed monarch),13 C67/45, m. 42. and he was placed on the unpopular tax commission of 1463. That summer the new King’s friends Sir John Fogg† and Sir John Scott† brought an action against him in the common pleas for the unjust detention of £21, while at the same time suing his kinsman Reynold Basset, rector of the church of Holy Trinity, Guildford, for £20.14 CP40/809, rots. 173, 173d. Financial difficulties may have been behind Thomas’s decision to relinquish possession of his moiety of Eastleigh in Hampshire to Thomas Welles* in 1464, in return for an annual rent of £4.15 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 390-1; CP25(1)/207/34/2, 5. It was not until the Readeption of Henry VI that Basset emerged once more from obscurity. On 12 Nov. 1470 he obtained in association with William Merston an Exchequer lease of the valuable Surrey manor of Bansted and Walton, along with its park and warren, and two days later he made a second appearance in the Exchequer, this time to offer securities for the King’s half-brother Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, granted keeping of castles and lordships in Wales and the marches of the late Sir William Herbert*, who had been given Jasper’s title by Edward IV.16 CFR, xx. 279-80, 283. A month later Basset was appointed sheriff of Hampshire. Shortly before the Coventry Parliament had met in 1459 he had been named as an executor of the Hampshire landowner Thomas Tame*. Now, during the Readeption, he was enfeoffed by Tame’s widow of her manor of Esthorpe by Basingstoke, for the performance of her will.17 PCC 21 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 158); CCR, 1468-76, no. 1026. Inevitably, Edward IV’s victories at Barnet and Tewkesbury in the spring of 1471 led to Basset’s prompt removal from office as sheriff. Nevertheless, he eventually became acceptable to the Yorkist regime, to the extent that he was placed on the Surrey bench in 1473, and entered the service of the King’s friend Lord Hastings.18 E5/562.

Basset is thought to have died in 1475, although on what evidence is uncertain.19 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 49. Two years earlier the manors of Burgham and Clandon and land and rents elsewhere in Surrey had been entailed on his male issue by his wife Anne,20 CP25(1)/232/76/2; C1/469/1. and these duly passed together with the manor of Frobury to their son Thomas (d.1493), and from the latter to his elder son Richard.21 VCH Hants, iv. 255; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 920; VCH Surr. iii. 392. Thomas junior seems to have died a young man, leaving his goods to be divided between his widow Sibyl and uncle Nicholas, the latter being instructed to provide for his ‘pouer children’: PCC 8 Vox (PROB11/10, ff. 59-59v). Following the death of Richard Basset, leaving an only daughter as his heir, the title to Clandon and Burgham was contested by his brother William: C1/469/1.