William Basse (abt. 1583 - aft. 1653)

Born about 1583 in Oxfordshire, England. [uncertain]

Died after 1653 after about age 70 in Oxfordshire, England [uncertain]

Biography

William Basse is Notable.

• William Basse was born about 1583 and is said to have served as a ‘retainer’ to the Wenman family of Thame Park in Oxfordshire for a period of more than forty years, serving different generations of the same family in a career which stretched from the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign to the political upheaval of the civil war.
• As well as being a member of the servant class, William was a poet who first came to the attention of historians and students of language in 1602, when Basse published his first literary work, a poem of 75 six-line stanzas entitled 'Sword and Buckler or The Serving-Mans Defence'.
• Basse's second published work was 'Three Pastoral Elegies of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella (1602)', a piece of love poetry. He is also noted for his poetry collection dated circa 1622, entitled Polyhymnia and his work on Shakespeare:

On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, he died in April 1616

Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh

To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie

A little nearer Spenser to make room

For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.

To lodge all four in one bed make a shift

Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth

Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain

For whom your curtains may be drawn again.

If your precedency in death doth bar

A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,

Under this carved marble of thine own

Sleep rare tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone,

Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,

Possess as lord not tenant of thy grave,

That unto us and others it may be

Honor hereafter to be laid by thee.

Civil war delayed publication of his collected works entitled Polyhymnia indefinitely and only a few handwritten copies exist.

William Basse's actual death date is unknown but from a total absence of any reference to his death in the Thame parish registers, it can be deduced that it was probably between Nov 1653 and May 1657, when the register was not kept up due to civil war. No interim register, if one was taken, has survived. No monument to him or headstone survives, either in the burial ground of the abbey adjoining the chapel at Thame Park, in the Chapel itself (built before the dissolution of the monasteries and restored in 1836), or in the churchyard of Thame Parish Church. At Moreton where he lived, there was no church or burial ground. Nor is his name decipherable on any of the headstones at nearby Rycote. The nature of his death, therefore, remains shrouded in obscurity, as does his birth.

From my research I have found out that the name Basse is considered to be quite rare and all the people named Basse that were alive around the time of William's life were related to each other, see sources below.

Sources

• https://archive.org/stream/poeticalworksofw00bass/poeticalworksofw00bass_djvu.txt
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Basse
• http://oxfraud.com/sites/default/files/devere/sites/all/images/basse.jpg
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8005165