The Skaggs-Files

Chancery records · Pipe rolls · G. H. Fowler, ed., The cartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of Old Wardon, Bedfordshire: from the manuscript (Latin 223) in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (1931) · J. Godber, ed., The cartulary of Newnham Priory, 1 vol. in 2 pts, Bedfordshire Historical RS, 43 (1963–4) · R. Ransford, ed., The early charters of the Augustinian canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1062–1230 (1989) · F. N. Davis, ed., Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, episcopi Lincolniensis, CYS, 10 (1913)

Bassingbourn, Humphrey of (d. 1238x41), ecclesiastic and justice, was a native of Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire, related to the local lords of the manor, including Warin of Bassingbourn, a prominent counsellor of King John. In 1206 Humphrey was presented by the king to Bassingbourn church, and by 1225 was rector of the nearby church of Wendy. As a landowner in his own right he held property at Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, and possibly also at Gravenhurst. He makes his first recorded appearance as a canon of Salisbury, prebendary of Netherbury, and archdeacon of Wiltshire, appointed some time between 1179 and 1193. In 1193 he was promoted to the archdeaconry of Salisbury, an office which he held until his death or resignation at a date between 1238 and 1241. He also held a prebend at Lincoln Cathedral from before 1219. In all probability he is to be identified with a namesake, rector of a moiety of the church of Leverton in Lincolnshire, who was dead by 1239 and who gave relics to Waltham Abbey, the patron of Leverton church.

In 1200 Bassingbourn witnessed a pair of royal charters, issued by the king in France, and in 1206 he served briefly as a royal justice, sent to hear pleas and to levy the king's tallage in East Anglia and the counties of the east midlands. Following the imposition of the papal interdict upon England in 1208, he was restored through royal favour to various rents that he held in Yorkshire and elsewhere, but in 1216, during the civil war, he may have joined the rebel barons, since he was fined 100 marks and a palfrey to have the king's grace, and was issued with royal letters of protection shortly afterwards. Despite his contacts with the royal court, his career appears to have been spent mostly at Salisbury. His time as archdeacon there coincided with the removal of the site of the cathedral from Old Sarum to Salisbury and the imposition of reform upon the morals and learning of the parish clergy.

Nicholas Vincent