Francis Bassett

Sir Francis Bassett (1594-1645), was a sheriff and vice-admiral of Cornwall and the recorder and M.P. of St. Ives.

He married in 1620 Ann, daughter of Sir Jonathan Trelawny of Trelawne, and, during the Civil War in 1643 was busily engaged as a Royalist in the western part of Cornwall, raising money and drilling forces for the king. Letters of his to his wife ‘at her Tehidy’ are preserved, recording the Royalist victories of Stamford Hill near Stratton, and of Braddock Down near Lostwithiel, at the latter of which (or at any rate very shortly after the fight) he, with most of the Cornish gentry, was present, and was knighted on the field. He records in another letter to his wife that after the battle ‘the king, in the hearing of thousands, as soon as he saw me in the morning, cryed to mee “Deare Mr. Sheriffe, I leave Cornwall to you safe and sound”’.[1]

He was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1642–1644; there is a complaint against him in the Star Chamber, 18 May 1625.[2]

In 1640 he presented to the borough of St Ives a loving-cup bearing the following inscription:—
If any discord twixt my friends arise
Within the borough of belov'd St. Ives,
It is desirèd this my cup of love
To everie one a peace-maker may prove.
Then am I blest to have given a legacie,
So like my harte, unto posteritie.

Sir Francis died 19 September 1645. The full vengeance of Cromwell fell upon his son John, though the latter had never taken up arms; and, compelled to compound for his estates, he had to sell St Michael's Mount in 1660 to a member of the St Aubyn family, in whose possession it has ever since remained. Sir Francis's second son, Francis, was a puritan, residing at Taunton, and in 1661 was accused of a conspiracy against Charles II, of which charge, however, he was honourably acquitted on a letter which he was alleged to have written being proved a forgery.[3]

His portrait, a fine example of Vandyck, is preserved at Tehidy. He appears to have been a sportsman, much addicted to hawking and cock-fighting.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Polwhele, Traditions and Recollections, i. 17–20
  2. ↑ (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 12496
  3. ↑ (cf. Stanford, Life of Joseph Alleine (1861), p. 194).

References