BASKET, John

The family background of this MP is obscure, although it seems very likely that he was related to William Basket, who had a tenancy for life of the manor of Sturminster Marshall in Dorset by grant of the wealthy merchant Thomas Beaupyne† (d.1404), especially as he himself was later an associate of the Worftons (or Wroughtons) and Venours, into whose families Beaupyne’s daughters married. He may well have been the John Basket residing at Sturminster Marshall who was outlawed in 1427 after failing to appear in court to answer a plea of trespass, but successfully sued for a pardon.4 CIPM, xviii. 982; CPR, 1422-9, p. 364; C88/106/60. This would not necessarily rule out the possibility that he was the layman of the diocese of London who, in the previous year, obtained a papal licence to choose his own confessor.5 CPL, vii. 448. Of the MP’s property little is recorded. He and his wife Alice possessed a reversionary interest in the manor of Lidiard Millicent in Wiltshire, which was held for life by Agnes, widow of Robert Andrew*. In 1439 John, Lord Clinton, confirmed the Baskets’ title, but the nature of their relationship to Robert and Agnes is not revealed.6 CCR, 1435-41, p. 245. Nor is it known how Basket acquired his manor at Bagshot in Surrey, which he held as a tenant of Miles Windsor.7 CCR, 1447-54, p. 302.

Basket’s career was made in the service of John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, to whom he remained attached from the early 1430s until he died. Stafford called upon him to assist in his property transactions, notably as a feoffee of his lands in Hampshire,8 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Somborne Regis deeds, A3. and to stand surety for him at the Exchequer (which he duly did on three occasions in the late 1430s).9 CFR, xvi. 306; xvii. 56, 76. Stafford and his mainpernors obtained a royal pardon for debts due for the manor of Swallowfield, Berks., in Jan. 1445: CPR, 1441-6, p. 320. It was doubtless to Stafford, who was chancellor from 1432 to 1450, that Basket owed his various royal appointments in that period. Indeed, this much was implied when, in 1437, he obtained royal letters confirming the grant made to him for life by Queen Joan of the parkership of Odiham, for the royal patent referred to him as ‘esquire of the bishop of Bath, chancellor of England’.10 CPR, 1436-41, p. 38. Following Stafford’s translation to Canterbury in 1443, Basket not only continued to be a member of his household,11 CCR, 1447-54, p. 25. but also to serve him as steward of his liberties and feoffee of his estates.12 Magdalen Coll., Enham deeds, B19, 201, 224; Somborne Regis deeds, A108. It is therefore against this background that Basket’s participation in royal administration should be seen: his escheatorship of Surrey and Sussex, his appointment to ad hoc commissions, and his continuation in office at Odiham. From July 1437 he not only had a life tenancy of the park at Odiham, but also leases at the Exchequer of the lordship, manor and hundred there (initially consigned to him jointly with a fellow Stafford retainer, William Hall*). In May 1440 the lordship was granted him for life in return for an annual rent of £22 6s. 3d. (reduced from the £36 paid hitherto), and responsibility for paying certain wages.13 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 71, 155, 443; CFR, xvi. 344; xvii. 34; E159/219, brevia Easter rot. 3d. These wages included sums due to the constable of Odiham, a post he himself acquired in September 1441 jointly with John Becket (a yeoman of the King’s chamber, who had held it on his own previously), as well as the salary of the parker, which from the following December the two men also agreed to share.14 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 97, 98; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 25, 26.

It was at this point in his career that Basket was elected to Parliament for the first time, as a knight of the shire for Surrey. Undoubtedly, his close links with Bishop Stafford the chancellor and his status as constable of Odiham were significant factors in his election, and it is of interest that Becket accompanied him to the Commons, as MP for the Surrey borough of Reigate. Although Basket had attended the parliamentary elections held in Surrey for the Parliament of 1437, there is little to suggest that he had established strong connexions among the gentry of the county.15 C219/15/1, 4. His closest associates were fellow Stafford retainers, such as Geoffrey Godelok*, although he did form links with men from Guildford, the county town. The London grocer Mark Gildesburgh enfeoffed him of property there, and he was acquainted with the prominent local attorney John Hipperon*.16 CCR, 1441-7, p. 118; 1447-54, p. 25; KB27/734, rot. 49. John Berewe*, a neighbour at Odiham and member of the Household, called on his services as a feoffee, and he acted in a similar capacity with regard to buildings in Lambeth which later came into the possession of Ralph Legh*, another royal servant who had sat in the Parliament of 1442.17 CFR, xvii. 319; CCR, 1441-7, p. 368; 1447-54, pp. 130-2. At an unknown date Basket was enfeoffed of property in Guildford by William Brocas* of Beaurepaire for settlement in marriage on Brocas’s daughter and her kinsman Arnold Brocas*, yet another Member of this same Parliament.18 C1/25/205, 116/15.

In the years 1443-5, Basket was appointed for consecutive terms as sheriff in Surrey and Sussex and then in Wiltshire, an indication of the trust placed in him by his lord the chancellor.19 The many suits he brought against men of Wilts. in Hil. term 1446, for debts amounting to £147, perhaps arose from this second shrievalty: CP40/740, rot. 451. His later role as steward for Archbishop Stafford engaged him in judicial duties in Kent, but it was once again for Surrey that he was returned to Parliament, early in 1449. By then he was a member of the county bench. Although by 1450 he was in receipt of fees in the royal household as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber, he was not numbered among the King’s particular favourites, for he lost the farm of Odiham following the Act of Resumption of that year, and when he regained it, in May 1451, he was required not only to share it with Humphrey Stafford III* but also to pay a considerably increased annual farm of £50.20 E101/410/6, f. 46; CFR, xviii. 199; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 258.

Curiously, Basket’s death occurred within just a few days of that of his lord, Archbishop Stafford, who died on 25 May 1452. Perhaps they succumbed to the same disease. On 2 June his surviving co-feoffees of the various Stafford lands in Hampshire conveyed them to another member of the late archbishop’s household, John Audley*, son and heir of James, Lord Audley,21 Enham deeds, B203, 219; Somborne Regis deeds, A9. A few days later the sheriff of Surr. was ordered to elect someone to take Basket’s place as a coroner in Windsor forest: CCR, 1447-54, p. 295. and it was also to John that the wardship of Basket’s son and heir, William, fell. However, rumour had it that Audley neglected his ward, failing to keep him arrayed as his friends would have liked, and before too long his financial troubles caused him to sell the wardship to Bishop Waynflete of Winchester for £200.22 Enham deeds, A89; Somborne Regis deeds, A9, 114. The various lands which Basket had held as a feoffee for the archbishop were also conveyed to Waynflete by Audley, who was constrained to do so by bonds for 1,000 marks made in 1455.23 Somborne Regis deeds, A110; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 67, 102-3. Basket’s will has not survived. His widow and executrix, Alice, obtained a royal pardon on 4 Feb. 1462, by which date she was also the widow and executrix of Robert Tourges*, the former shire-knight for Dorset. Soon after, she married another Dorset landowner, the prominent Yorkist William Browning I* of Melbury Sampford.24 C67/45, m. 40; Hutchins, ii. 676-7.