BASSETT, William (1602-56), of Claverton, Som. and Uley, Glos.

The Bassetts were relative newcomers to Somerset. For centuries they had been a Gloucestershire family, based at Uley, about five miles from Stroud.16Vis. Glos. 1623, 204-6. They retained lands there throughout this period. This MP’s mother was from Backwell in north Somerset and in 1609 his father, William Bassett senior bought the manor of Claverton, located just outside Bath on the border with Wiltshire.17Som. RO, DD/SK/1/2/1-2. Claverton now became the family’s principal seat. One member of the family, either this MP or his son, created there what John Aubrey considered ‘the best vineyard I have heard of in England’.18J. Aubrey, The Natural Hist. of Wilts. ed. J. Britton (1747), 104. This MP was aged just 11 when his father died in 1613.19Sales of Wards ed. Hawkins, 84-5. Under the terms of his will, Bassett senior appointed his father-in-law, Rees Davies, and Richard Gay of Bath to buy the wardship of William junior from the crown and then to manage the family estates for a period of ten years on young William’s behalf. Davies and Gay were also to oversee William’s education.20PROB11/122/229. As expected, Davies and Gay were able to buy his wardship in February 1614; they paid £500.21Sales of Wards ed. Hawkins, 84-5. The ten-year term meant that Bassett gained control of the estates just after he had reached the age of 21. Following the death of his first wife in 1628, Bassett married the only child of the late Sir Joseph Killigrew†. This gave him a claim to parts of the Killigrew estates, although he faced competing claims from Killigrew’s widow, who had since married Sir John Stawell*.22Coventry Docquets, 598; Cal. of…the Muniment Room at Sherborne House, 191-2.

In the 1630s Bassett devoted himself to public service in Somerset. Between 1630 and 1631 he served as the treasurer of hospitals within the eastern half of the county.23QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 127, 156. During that year he was promoted to the commission of the peace.24Coventry Docquets, 66. He was an active justice of the peace throughout that decade.25QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 166-301; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 2. It was in that capacity that in 1632 he and John Harington I* were given the responsibility of overseeing the upbringings of the children of the late Robert Fry in place of William Prynne*.26Som. Assize Orders 1629-40, 18-19. But it was Bassett’s period as sheriff that propelled him into the centre of Somerset politics.

That appointment was made in early October 1636, although it seems that it was not until late the following month that this was confirmed to him.27List of Sheriffs, 125; Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 133. As sheriff, it was now his responsibility to collect the latest Ship Money demand of £8,000 from the county.28Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 703. He got to work at once but immediately ran into opposition.29Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 127-8; CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 374, 428, 510, 535-6, 562; Som. RO, DD/PH/223/68. By February 1637 he was warning one of the clerks of the privy council, Edward Nicholas†, that some of the opponents in Somerset planned to petition the council, although he was sufficiently relaxed at that prospect to recommend that most of those complaints should just be ignored.30CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 446. By April he had already collected £3,500 and by May this had risen to £4,500.31CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 510, 571; 1637, pp. 80, 97. But there was also no let-up to the complaints.32CSP Dom. 1636, pp. 80-1, 117, 134; Som. RO, DD/PH/223/53; DD/PH/223/115. One rating dispute in particular had a personal edge. Bassett held lands at Tintinhull as a tenant of his in-laws, the Killigrews, and some of the locals, led by Sir Robert Phelips†, accused him of reducing the amount levied on one of his friends.33Som. RO, DD/PH/223/78; DD/PH/223/84; CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 18-19, 134, 424; 1637-8, pp. 31-2. In most cases the privy council simply referred complaints to Bassett, the bishop of Bath and Wells, William Piers, and Bassett’s predecessor as sheriff, John Malet.34CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 166, 169, 221, 346-7, 404. Malet himself still had not collected the full sum from the previous ship money writ and Malet’s own predecessor, Henry Hodges, also owed some money. Bassett assisted them to collect their arrears while working flat out to collect the more recent demands.35CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 415-16, 504; 1637-8, pp. 151-2. When his successor, Sir William Portman*, took over as sheriff in late September 1637, Bassett was burdened with arrears of his own, and appreciating the difficulties of collection, he sought guidance from the privy council.36CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 478, 513; 1637-8, pp. 147, 156-7, 176, 314, 389. When in January 1638 the Somerset commission of the peace demanded to see his accounts as sheriff they were not doing so to help him.37QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 294. Yet by the summer of 1638 he had managed to reduce his arrears to £229 7s 9½d, although as he bitterly pointed out to Nicholas, this was no thanks to the privy council.38CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 486, 488. In the final reckoning, £146 12s 5d was never paid.39Gordon, ‘Collection of ship-money’, 160. The case of one of the Somerset constables Bassett had placed under arrest for refusing to cooperate with the collection was still dragging on in 1639.40CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 175, 407; 1639, pp. 500, 527, 535. Bassett had, in the circumstances, done everything that he could. He won no friends in the process. His health may also have suffered. In 1639 the rector of Claverton granted Bassett a licence to eat flesh on fish days ‘by reason of his notorious sickness’.41Hierurgia Anglicana (1848), 214.

His record as a ship money sheriff would have complicated any ambitions he had for a seat in Parliament in 1640. These is no evidence that he even attempted to stand in the Short Parliament elections. He probably voted for John Coventry* and Sir Ralph Hopton* in the contest for the county seats.42Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 195. That autumn, however, a vacancy became available at Bath, the constituency closest to Bassett’s estates at Claverton. He was elected with Alexander Popham* on 21 October 1640.

Bassett was never a major figure in the Long Parliament. All that is known about his first year at Westminster is that he took the Protestation and that he sat on the committee handling the private bill to settle the estates belonging to the Pophams, the family of his colleague.43CJ ii. 141a, 228a. In his diary on 2 November 1641, Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted that ‘Basset’ had been appointed to the committee on the bill for the relief of prisoners in the hands of the Mediterranean pirates, but this was probably just a clerical error as Bassett is not named in the relevant entry in the Commons’ Journal.44D’Ewes (C), 69; CJ ii. 302b. Only in early 1642, in the aftermath of the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members, is there much sign of him in the Commons. On 14 January he was one of the MPs appointed as a manager for the conference with the Lords about reports of troop movements in the Windsor area.45CJ ii. 379b. With everyone on high alert, such rumours were potentially of great significance. The role of conference manager also a major responsibility for someone who seems otherwise to have made no great impact. It is less surprising that he was then included on the committee created to investigate those reports.46CJ ii. 381a. The following month he even spoke in the House, arguing on 11 February in favour of the appointment of the 1st marquess of Hertford (Sir William Seymour†) as the lord lieutenant of Somerset.47PJ i. 351. But, almost immediately, he began to spend significant periods away from Westminster. On 5 March he was granted leave of absence. This may have been on legitimate grounds, as he told the Commons that he wanted to attend a trial at the Wells assizes.48PJ i. 514-15; CJ ii. 468a. More suspicious perhaps was his wish to stay away in June 1642.49CJ ii. 634b. By then war looked a real possibility and he may have preferred to lie low at home.

The Commons was certainly suspicious about Bassett by 26 January 1643, when he and Sir William Portman were summoned to attend.50CJ ii. 943a. Neither responded. On 10 April the Commons therefore declared that both men, together with Sir Gerard Naper*, were delinquents and so were to be arrested by the serjeant-at-arms.51CJ iii. 38a. But Bassett was evidently able to persuade the Commons’ committee on absent Members that he was still to be trusted. On its recommendation, he was re-admitted to the House on 9 May. The following month he demonstrated his allegiance to Parliament by taking the Covenant and the negative oath.52CJ iii. 77b, 118b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 404. Parliament in turn then appointed him to the Somerset assessment commission.53A. and O.

But Bassett’s position suddenly became much more difficult. In the summer of 1643 the royalists advanced into northern Somerset. A story not recorded until the late eighteenth century claimed that at some unspecified date during the civil war Claverton had come under artillery fire and that a cannon ball had passed over the heads of Bassett and his guests (who included Sir Edward Hungerford*) as they were dining in the hall.54Collinson, Som. i. 146. If true, this probably related to the build-up to the battle of Lansdown (5 July), for Sir William Waller* camped on Claverton Down on 2 July and briefly came under attack there from Prince Maurice on 3 July.55J. Wroughton, A Community at War: The Civil War in Bath and North Som. 1642-1650 (Bath, 1992), 99-101. On 26 July 1643 Bristol fell to Prince Rupert and the surrounding area, including Bath and Claverton, came under royalist control.

According to his later, doubtless self-serving petition to the Committee for Compounding, Bassett was now forced to quit London because his wife was seriously ill. Once back in Somerset, he felt unable to leave his family and his estates unsupervised. He later maintained that he had never been in arms against Parliament, as well as claiming that he had been imprisoned at Bath for having opposed some of the royalist taxes.56CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 403; CCC 1181. That the king, in his new commission of the peace issued from Oxford in October 1643, had continued him in office as a Somerset justice of the peace is not necessarily inconsistent with these claims.57QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, p. xx. Bassett was, after all, an existing member of the commission and he was just the type of uncommitted local worthy whose support the king needed to gain. In contrast, the Commons had by now abandoned all hope of securing his assistance. On 5 February 1644 they expelled him from Parliament.58CJ iii. 389b. Five months later the Committee for Advance of Money fined him £1,000, even though they were not yet in a position to extract it from him.59CCAM 420. Despite this, it was also a moment when Bassett expanded his estates. In April 1644 his brother-in-law, Henry Killigrew*, transferred outright to Bassett lands at Tintinhull which he had already occupied as a tenant.60Coventry Docquets, 689; Som. RO, DD/PH/59. This was no mere fiction for Killigrew’s benefit, as the lands would remain the property of the Bassetts.61VCH Som. iii. 258.

By the autumn of 1645, with Lord Goring (George Goring*) defeated and Bristol re-captured, north east Somerset was once again under parliamentarian control. The time had come for Bassett to try to make his peace with Parliament. On 25 October he surrendered himself and the following week, with Prynne’s assistance, he obtained a pass from Speaker William Lenthall to allow him to travel up to London. On his way there, however, he was intercepted by some of the king’s troops near Wallingford. He remained a royalist prisoner in Wallingford Castle until the spring of 1646, when he continued to London. His petition requesting permission to compound was in the hands of the Committee for Compounding by 10 April 1646.62CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 403-4; CCC 1181. He was back in Somerset by July, when John Harington I* met with him, presumably to discuss the forthcoming Somerset by-election.63Harington’s Diary, 28. The Committee for Advance of Money now resumed their interest in him, and in August they fined him a further £1,500. By arguing that he should first be allowed to compound, he bought extra time. It was over two years before the compounding commissioners made any progress with his case.64CCAM 420; CCC 85. In February 1649 his fine to compound was finally set at £2,512 17s.65CCC 1181-2. Even then, it was not until 23 August 1649, after he had petitioned his former colleagues, that the Rump confirmed this, ruling that half the fine should be paid immediately and that the other half could be delayed.66CJ vi. 208b, 284b; CCC 1182. Bassett was then reported to be selling some of his lands in order to raise this money. In May 1650 the fine was reduced slightly to £2,492 10s and in March 1651 Parliament approved a more substantial reduction to £1,935 7s.67CCC 1182; CJ vi. 552b. Seven months later he was complaining that he had paid his money on time, but that the local sequestration committee was still not releasing his rents. A year later, in November 1652, he petitioned Parliament with the same complaint. The parliamentary committee on petitions agreed. But it was not until June 1653, on being prompted by the council of state, that the Committee for Compounding accepted this. Only at that point were his rents released to him.68CCC 1182-3. He was naturally included on the list of Somerset royalists submitted by John Disbrowe* to the London registry office in 1655.69Add. 34012, f. 4.

Unsurprisingly, Bassett was left heavily in debt. In late 1655, with those debts unpaid and perhaps already ill, he attempted to put his affairs in order. On 14 December he handed over most of his lands to two of his friends in Wiltshire, Paul Methwyn or Methuen of Bradford and Edward Wallis of Trowbridge, with instructions that they were to pay off his debts.70Som. RO, DD/SK/1/2/4. That same day he also drew up his will. With most of the estate already tied up by this settlement, the will was mainly concerned with the provisions for his younger sons, Joseph and Richard, and for his daughter, Katherine. Bassett died before 15 October the following year, when this will was proved. In that will he had set out elaborate instructions concerning his burial. He left £200 for the construction of a chapel to the north of the parish church at Claverton, which was to contain his tomb and which was to be built ‘according to the model or draught thereof made now in my custody’. This seems never to have been built. He also left £15 for the repair of the church at Norton Malreward.71PROB11/260/114. Four years later, his eldest son and heir, William†, was able to recover the lands held by Methwyn and Wallis.72Som. RO, DD/SK/1/2/4; HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715. William, who was involved in royalist plotting in 1659 and who was knighted in 1660, sat as MP for his father’s old constituency in all but one of the Parliaments between 1669 and his death in 1693.