Basingstoke was an advocate of Greek literacy and seems to have been instrumental in introducing the apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs to Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln.
Thomas Andrew Archer writes that Basingstoke seems to have been one of the earliest Englishmen who possessed a real knowledge of Greek, and was probably one of the first natives of our islands—if we except the doubtful instance of John Scotus Eriugena - who perfected himself in this language by a sojourn at Athens.
Basingstoke credited Constantina, who was said to "foretell pestilences, thunderstorms, eclipses, and even earthquakes with unerring certainty", for his knowledge of science.
[1] Based on a letter by Grosseteste, Basingstoke had by 1235 returned to England and was already acting as Archdeacon of Leicester.
In 1242, Grosseteste had the work brought from Greece and translated it with help of a clerk of St. Albans, "for the strengthening of the Christian faith and the confusion of the Jews", who were said to have deliberately hidden the book away "on account of the manifest prophecies of Christ contained therein."