doctor in that faculty. He seems to have practised at Oxford for some years with considerable success. Then he removed to London, where he was admitted a candidate in the College of Physicians on 18 April 1614 and a fellow on 20 March 1614–15. He was censor of the college in 1615 and several subsequent years, anatomy reader in 1626, and consiliarius in 1640. He attained to great eminence in his profession, and was appointed physician to James I and afterwards to Charles I, who conferred on him the honour of knighthood 30 Aug. 1636. Dr. Baldwin Hamey says: ‘Rex autem in Bibliotheca Oxoniensi, tanquam in acie sui generis instructissima eundem in Equestrem cooptavit’ (MS. Sloan. 2149, p. 9). It is related that he had no fewer than a hundred patients a week, and that he amassed so much wealth as to acquire the title of ‘Sir Simon Baskerville the rich.’ Further it is recorded of him ‘that he was a great friend to the clergy and the inferior loyal gentry,’ insomuch that ‘he never took a fee of an orthodox minister under a dean, nor of any suffering cavalier in the cause of Charles I under a gentleman of an hundred a year, but with physick to their bodies generally gave relief to their necessities’ (Lloyd, Memoires, ed. 1677, p. 635).
He died on 5 July 1641, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, where a mural monument, with a Latin epitaph, was erected to his memory.
[Prince's Worthies of Devon, 93; Biog. Brit. (Kippis), i. 670; MS. Addit. 34102, f. 204 b; Dugdale's St. Paul's, 106, 107; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 272, 316, 342, 343; Fuller's Worthies (1662), i. 276; Munk's Coll. of Physicians (1878), i. 158.]
BASKERVILLE, Sir THOMAS (d. 1597), general, was the son of Henry Baskerville, Esq., of the city of Hereford, and is described as of Good Rest, Warwickshire. He obtained a high reputation as a military commander. In the Harleian MSS. there is an account of his voyage after the great treasure at Porto Rico, when he was general of Queen Elizabeth's Indian armada. He was sent with Lord Willoughby to France to assist Henry IV in 1589. He was M.P. for Carmarthen borough in 1592. Subsequently he commanded the troops despatched to Brittany (1594) and Picardy (1596). He died of a fever at Picqueny, in Picardy, on 4 June 1597, and was buried in the new choir of St. Paul's, beneath a monument, consumed in the fire of London in 1666. He married Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Throgmorton. He left a son, Hannibal [q. v.]
[Dugdale's Hist. of St. Paul's (ed. Ellis), 72; Life of Anthony à Wood (ed. Bliss), xxxiii, xxxiv; Harl. MS. 4762; Addit. MS. 14284, p. 66; Thomas's Hist. Notes, i. 393; Gent. Mag. xcv. (ii.) 315.]
BASKERVILLE, THOMAS (1630–1720), topographer, the fourth son of Hannibal Baskerville, the antiquary [q. v.], was born at Bayworth House, Sunningwell, near Abingdon, in 1630, since, according to the ‘Visitation of Berkshire,’ his age on 16 March 1664 was thirty-four. He wrote an account of a journey which, in 1677 and 1678, he made through several counties in England; and a part of his manuscript relating to Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire is still preserved in the Harleian Collection. This journal, though referred to by several of his contemporaries, mainly consists of short notes of the towns and places successively visited by the writer, interspersed with epitaphs copied in churchyards, and some doggerel verse. He died on 9 Feb. 1720.
[Harleian MSS. 1483, 6344, and 4716, 53 i.; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), Life, xxxiii, xxxiv, p. 86; Granger's Letters, p. 264; Hearne's MS. xi. 38.] E. D. J.
BASKERVILLE, THOMAS (1812–1840?), botanical writer, was born on 26 April 1812, and served a four years' apprenticeship to Mr. Soulby, of Ash, Kent. From 1 Dec. 1829 to 9 April 1834 he attended lectures on anatomy under Jones Quain, dissection under Richard Quain, and surgery under Samuel Cooper. In November of the latter year he attended the North London Hospital, obtained the membership of the College of Surgeons on 22 Dec. 1835, and settled in practice at Canterbury. He was the author of ‘Affinities of Plants, with some Observations upon Progressive Development,’ London, 1839, 8vo. He is stated to have died in London in 1840, but his name appears in the college annual list of members so late as 1843.
[Records of Roy. Coll. Surgeons.]
BASKETT, JOHN (d. 1742), king's printer, is believed to have been the person of that name who addressed a petition to the treasury praying that since he was ‘the first that undertook to serve his Majtie with parchment cartridges for his Majties fleet, by which meanes he saved his Majtie severall thousand pounds,’ he might be appointed ‘one of the Comrs, Comptroller or Receiver,’ being ‘places to be disposed of by the late duty upon paper, &c.’ (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., viii. 65). The petition was not dated; but it must have been written about
