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Basse-cour of a country-seat, is the yard, or place where thecattle, fowls, &c. are kept.
•' Basse Enciente, or Basse Inclosure, in fortification, afalse trench, made to hide a real one.
BASSEEN, a city and fortress of Indostan, in Deccan, 27 milesN. of Bombay. Lon. 72. 10. E. Lat. 19. 19. N-BASSET,'[basset, Fr.] a game at cards, said to have been in-dented by a noble Venetian, for which he was banished. It wasfirst introduced into France by Signior Justiniani, ambassador ofVenice, in 1674. Severe laws were made against it by Louis XIV. to elude which they disguised basset nnder the name of pour etcentre, that is, “ for and against,” which occasioned new arrets■and prohibitions of Parliament '. The parties concerned in it are,a dealer or banker; his assistant, who supervises the losing cards;•and tire punter, or any one who plays against the banker.
BASS ETERRE, a part of the island, and also the capital of St.Christopher’s.
Basseterre, the chief city of Gaudaloupe.
BASSET1NG, in the coal mines, denotes the rise of the veinof coal towards the surface of the earth, till it come within two orthree feet of the surface itself. This is also called by the workmencropping; and stands opposed to dipping, which is tjie descentof the vein to such a depth that it is rarely, if ever, followed to theend.
BASSETTO, a base-viol of the smallest size.
BASSIA, a genus of the monogynia order, and dodecandriaclass of plants. Calyx quadriphyllous ; corolla octofid, with thetube inflated; stamina 16; drupe quinquespermous. There arefive species, natives of the East Indies.
BASSINGTIFVVATE, a town and an extensive lake in Cum-berland.
BASSO, in music, generally signifies the bass, but sometimesin pieces of music for several voices, the singing bass is more par-ticularly so called.
Basso Relievo, [Itah] See Bass Relief .
Basso Repieno, the bass of the grand chorus, or that whichplays only in particular places.
Basso Violo, the bass-viol.
BASSOON , [liasson, Fr.] a musical instrument of the wind kind,blown with a reed, and furnished with eleven holes, which arestopped like other large flutes: its diameter at bottom is nineinches, and it serves for the bass in concerts of hautboys, See. Tomake them more portable, they are divided into two parts, whencethey are also called Fagots. A good bassoon is said to be worth400 or 500 pistoles.
BASSORA, BALSORA, BOSSORA, or BASRAH , a citybetween Arabia and Persia , situated in the extremity of the desartsof Irak , a little W. of the Tigris, in about 57° Lon. E. and 30°Lat. N.
BASSOVIA, a genus of the monogynia class and pentandriaorder. Corolla five-cleft, spreading, short tube ; berry ovate,knobbed ; seeds many. It has one species; viz. B. sylvatica; thestems herbaceous, three or four feet high, branched. Native ofGuiana .
BAST, lime-tree bark made into ropes or mats.
BASTAGA, [from liacaQ.t, portare; to carry,] the office ofcarriage or conveyance.
BASTAGARH, in antiquity, a company at Rome , who carriedthe fiscal species out of the provinces to Rome or Constantinople .
BASTARD, [ bastardd, Welsh , of low birth; basturde, Fr.]according to the civil and canon law,, is a person born of a womanout of wedlock, or not married; so that, according to order of law,fiis father is not known. The celebrated Blaekstone observes, inbis commentary, that " The civil and canon laws do not allow achild to remain a bastard, if the parents afterwards intermarry : andherein they differ most materially from our law : which though notso strict as to require that the chiid should be begotten, yet makesit an indispensable condition that it should be born, after lawfulwedlock. All children born before matrimony are bastards by ourlaw: and so it is of all children born so long after the death of thehusband, that, by the usual course of gestation, they could not bebegotten by him. But this being a matter of some uncertainty, theJaw is not exact as to a few days. But if a man dies, and his widowjoon after marries again, and a child is born within such a time asthat by the course of nature it might have been the child of eitherhusband: in this case, he is sakl to be more than ordinarily legiti-
mate: for he may, when he arrives at the years of discretion,choose which of the fathers he pleases. To prevent this, amongother inconveniences, the civil law ordained that no widow shouldmarry infra annum luctus; a rule which obtained so etlrly as thereign of August us, if not of Romulus :-and the same constitutionwas probably banded down to our early ancestors from the Ro-mans, during their stay in this island ; for we find it establishedunder the Saxon and Danish governments. As bastards may beborn before the coverture or marriage state is begun, or after it isdetermined; so also children born during wedlock may in some cir-cumstances be bastards. As if the husband be out ot the kingdomof England (or as the law loosely phrases it, extra quatuor maria)for above nine months, so that no access to his wife can be pre-sumed, her issue during that period shall he bastards. But gene-rally during coverture, access of the husband shall be presumed,unless the contrary shall be shewn; which is such a negative ascan only be proved by shewing him to be elsewhere; for thegeneral rule is prxsumitur pro legitiinalione. In a divorce a mensaet thoro, if the wife breeds children, they are bastards; for thelaw will presume the husband and wife conformable to the sen-tence of separation, unless access be proved ; but in a voluntaryseparation by agreement, the law will suppose access, unless thenegative be shewn. So also, if there be an apparent impossibilityof procreation on the part of the husband, as if he be only eightyears old, or the like, there the issue of the wife shall be bastard.Likewise, in case of divorce in the spiritual court a vinculo matri-monii, all the issue horn during the coverture are bastards; becausesuch divorce is always upon some cause that rendered the marriageunlawful and mill from the beginning. As to the rights and incapa-cities which appertain to a bastard:' The former are very few, beingonly such as he can acquire; for he can inherit nothing, beinglooked upon as the son of nobody, and sometimes called filiusnullius, sometimes filius populi. Yet he may gain a sirname byreputation, though be has none by inheritance. All other childrenhave their primary settlement in their father’s parish. but abastard in the parish where born, for he hath no father. How-ever, in case of fraud, as if a woman either be sent by order ofjustices, or come to beg as a vagrant, to a parish which she doesnot belong to, and drops her bastard there ; the bastard shall, inthe first case, be settled in the parish from whence she was illegallyremoved ; or in the latter case, in the mother’s own parish, if themother be apprehended for her vagrancy, Bastards also, born inany licensed hospital for pregnant women, are settled in the parishesto which the mothers belong. The incapacity of a bastard consistsprincipally in this, that he cannot be heir to any one; for beingnullius filius, he is therefore of kin to nobody, and has no ancestorfrom whom any inheritable blood can be derived : Therefore, ifthere be no other claimant upon an inheritance than such illegi-timate child, it shall escheat to the lord. And as bastards cannot beheirs themselves, so neither can they have any heirs but those oftheir own bodies. For as all collateral kindred consists in beingderived from the same common ancestor, and as a bastard has nolegal ancestors, he can have no collateral kindred ; and conse-quently can have no legal heirs, but such as claim by a lineal de-scent from himself. And therefore, if a bastard purchase land,and die seised thereof without issue, and intestate, the land shallescheat to the lord of the see. A bastard was also, in strictness,incapable of holy orders; and though that were dispensed with,yet he was utterly disqualified from holding any dignity in thechurch ; but this doctrine seems now obsolete; and in all otherrespects, there is no distinction between a bastard and another man.And really any other distinction but that of not inheriting, whichcivil policy renders necessary, would, with regard to the innocentoffspring of his parent’s crimes, be odious, unjust, and cruel, to thelast degree: and yet the civil law, so boasted of for its equitabledecisions, made bastards in some cases incapable even ot a giftfrom their parents. A bastard may, lastly, be made legitimate,and capable of inheriting, by the transcendant power of an act ofParliament, and not otherwise ; as was done in the case ot John ofGaunt’s bastard children, by a statute of Richard II .
Bastards, in artillery, pieces which are of an unusual or ille-gitimate make or proportion. ’These are of two kinds, long andshort, according as the defect is on the redundant or defectiveside.
Bastards, in the sea language, large sails of a galley* whichwill make way with a slack wind.
Bastard