John Basset, the son of the Rev. John Basset, rector of Illogan and Camborne, now claims a passing notice before we come to the last and perhaps most illustrious member of this family. He was born on 17th November, 1791, and was elected member of Parliament for Helston in 1840, failing, however, to retain his seat at the election in the following year; but he chiefly distinguished himself by the zealous interest which he took in the welfare of Cornish mining and the Cornish miner. In 1836 he published some treatises on the 'Mining Courts of the Duchy of Cornwall,' and, in the same year, 'Thoughts on the' (then) 'New Stannary Bill.' Three years afterwards appeared the 'Origin and History of the Bounding Act;' and, after another similar interval, in 1842—the year before his death at Boppart, on the Rhine—his 'Observations on Cornish Mining.'
But perhaps his most valuable contribution to Cornish literature was a treatise published in 1840, having for its humane object the amelioration of the physical condition of the miner—viz., 'Observations on the Machinery used for Raising Miners in the Hartz.' There can be little doubt that this work tended in no small degree to direct public attention to the great and avoidable exhaustion caused to the miner by his having to ascend many fathoms of ladders after long and laborious work in the heated and vitiated atmosphere of many of our deep mines. The result was the invention of an ingenious machine known as the steam man-engine, by means of which two huge vertical poles, with foot-rests at intervals, are set in motion side by side the whole depth of the mine-shaft. As one pole ascends, the other descends, and thus, by changing from one to the other by help of the foot-rests, the miner is enabled to ascend from his work, or descend to it, with the minimum expenditure of his own strength. If he who makes an oak grow where none grew before is to be considered a benefactor to his race, surely anyone who contributes in greater or less degree to so benevolent and beneficial an object as this steam man-engine has proved to be, has a good claim to be ranked among the philanthropic benefactors of his race. There is, of course, some little risk in performing this feat in the dark, damp and slippery mine-shafts, lit, perhaps, by a solitary candle stuck into a lump of clay and attached to the front of the miner's hat; and it is scarcely necessary to add that the use of the man-engine is most strictly forbidden to all except those by whom it is really required. Is it necessary to say that the man-engine, therefore, became a great attraction to all schoolboys who chanced to be within easy distance of one?—at any rate the writer, then a schoolboy, used to spend parts of many a half-holiday in practically investigating the merits of the machine, by descending by its means into the depths of the earth, until the utter darkness made the descent too dangerous even for a schoolboy.
John Basset's eldest son, John Francis Basset, of Stratton, brother of the present owner of the estates (Gustavus Lambert Basset, who served in the Crimea as lieutenant in the 72nd Highlanders), was a barrister, and was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1861. He succeeded to the Tehidy property on the death of his aunt, Frances, Baroness Basset, in 1855, and died at the family mansion in 1869. His chief mining interests (which were immense) were in the Bassets, South Frances, and Dolcoath mines. His landed property lay chiefly in Illogan, Camborne, Redruth, and St. Agnes, besides other estates which he owned in Meneage, Gluvias, Falmouth, Tywardreath, etc.
But we must now speak of one whom Davies Gilbert, P.R.S., described as, in every sense, the first man in the county—I mean that Francis Basset, D.C.L., Baron de Dunstanville of Tehidy, and Baron Basset of Stratton,[57] whose monument forms so conspicuous an object on the summit of the historic hill of Carn Brea, and which was erected to his memory by the county of Cornwall in 1836.[58] He was the grandson of Mrs. Delany's Francis Basset, and son of the Francis Basset who represented Penryn in Parliament from 1766 to 1769. His mother was Margaret St. Aubyn.[59] Born at Walcot, in Oxfordshire, on 9th August, 1757, he was educated at Harrow, Eton, and lastly at King's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of M.A. when twenty-nine years of age. When Lord de Dunstanville's father died, the boy wrote to Dr. Bathurst—afterwards Bishop of Norwich—this characteristic little note:
'Dear Sir,
'Knowing the regard my papa had for you, I wish you would be my tutor.
'Yours,
'Frank Basset.'