 "The archdeaconry of Northumberland", he writes, "will take up a whole man, (1) to reform the persons, (2) to repair the churches".He diligently visited the churches in his archdeaconry, and found "many of them scandalously ruinous"; but he met with a liberal and vigorous supporter in his attempts to reform in Bishop Cosin, with whom he appears to have been as closely connected as with his predecessor, Bishop Morton.The last fifteen years of Basire's life were comparatively uneventful.