Michael Linton's Bayeux Tapestry: 1066 - A Medieval Mosaic and Puzzles

Bigot :

"The Bigots^[42] or Wygots appear, from various circumstances too long to be detailed, to be descended from Wigot de St. Denis, one of the greatest nobles of Normandy, who made grants to Cerisy Abbey in 1042, and in 1050 subscribed a charter of Duke William at the head of the Norman barons. He was married to a sister of Turstin Goz, father of Richard d'Avranches (whose son was Hugh Lupus), and had a younger son, Robert Wigot, Fitz Wigot, or Bigot, who was introduced by Richard d'Avranches to the favour of Duke William."—The Norman People. The story is differently told by the monk of Jurmieges, who says that Robert was a knight in the service of William Warlenc, Count de Mortaine, and so needy that he asked leave of his liege lord to seek his fortune abroad, and follow Robert Guiscard to Apulia. The Count desired him not to go, promising that within eighty days he should have no need to better his position, as he might then help himself to whatever best pleased him in Normandy. From this intimation Robert concluded that his lord was planning an insurrection that should place the crown of Normandy on his own head, and asked his cousin Richard d'Avranches to obtain for him an audience of the Duke, to whom he at once communicated his suspicion of the plot. William acted upon it with such vigour that "his justice, if justice it was, fell so sharply and speedily as to look very like interested oppression."—Freeman. He at once accused the Count of treason, banished him, and gave the Comte' of Mortaine to his own half-brother Robert. Bigot himself must have been rewarded with several grants; for Wace (who mentions him at Hastings) speaks of him as a land-owner:—

"L'Ancestre Hue le Bigot
Ki avoit terre a Maletot
Etais Loges^[43] et a Chanon:"

adding that "he served the Duke in his house as one of his seneschals, which office he held in fee. He had with him a large troop, and was a noble vassal. He was small of body, but very brave and bold, and assaulted the English with his mace gallantly." There is some doubt whether it is Robert, or his son Roger that is here described; for both may have been in the battle; but it was at all events the latter who is recorded in Domesday as holding a great barony of one hundred and seventeen manors in Suffolk, besides other lands in Norfolk and Essex. He sided with Robert Court-heuse, and fortified his castle of Norwich against William Rufus, laying waste all the country round; yet he seems to have suffered no penalty for his revolt, and on the accession of Henry I. received a grant of Framlingham in Suffolk, with his father's office of Lord Steward of the Household. He married Adeliza, one of the daughters and co-heirs of Hugh de Grentemesnil, Seneschal of England, with whom he founded Thetford Abbey in 1107, and left seven children. His eldest son, William, styled Dapifer regis Anglorum, perished in the Blanche Nef; and it was the second Hugh le Bigot, who became the founder of this splendid house, and "the principal instrument for advancing Stephen, Earl of Boloigne, to the Crown of England. For being Steward of the Household to King Henry (an Office that gave him great repute) he hasted into England; and in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, averred upon his Oath, that King Henry on his death-bed, upon some dislike towards his Daughter Maud, the Empress, did disherite her, and appoint Stephen to be his Heir; whereupon the Archbishop (being credulous) solemnly anointed him King. For which great service, as some say, it was, that King Stephen, soon after, advanced him to the Earldom of the East Angles, commonly called Norfolk."—Dugdale.

Henry II. was no sooner seated on the throne, than he espoused his mother's quarrel by seizing Bigot's castles and declaring his honours forfeit. All were restored to him in 1163: yet, eleven years later, he made a secret treaty with the King's rebellious sons, and took up arms in their behalf. He and his Flemish levies were defeated by Robert de Lacy at Bury St. Edmund's; and the King, entering Suffolk with a strong force to deal out to him the full measure of his wrath, razed his castle of Walton to the ground, and captured Framlingham. But Bigot owned another stronghold that he deemed impregnable, and of which, according to tradition, he was wont to boast—

"Were I in my Castle of Bungay,
Upon the River of Waveney,
I would not set a button by the King of Cockeney."^[44]

An old ballad recites how "Bigot bold," when summoned to appear before the King,—laughed in the herald's face,

"And rode away on his berry brown steed,"

setting all pursuit at defiance;

"The Baily he rode and the Baily he ran
To catch the gallant Lord Hugh;
But for every mile the Baily rode
The Earl he rode more than two.

"When the Baily had ridden to Bramfield oak,^[45]
Sir Hugh was at Ilksall bower:
When the Baily had ridden to Halesworth Cross,
He was singing in Bungay tower:

"Now that I'm in my castle of Bungay,
Upon the river of Waveney,
I will ne care for the King of Cockeney.'

Yet this flourish of trumpets proved mere idle bravado; for when the King's troops beleaguered the place, Bigot's little garrison of five hundred men lost heart and deserted, leaving him to make what terms he could with his angry master. They were, as might have been foreseen, sufficiently humiliating. He had not merely to pay a fine of one thousand marks, but to see his cherished fortress levelled to the ground; and in his discomfiture he left the country, journeyed to Palestine with the Earl of Flanders, and only returned home to die in 1177.

He was succeeded by his son Roger, whom Coeur de Lion, on his accession, re-constituted Earl of Norfolk and Lord Steward; but for this charter, and the confirmation and restoration of his lands, he had to give a further sum of one thousand marks to the King. He was one of the confederate barons who confronted King John at Runnymede, and, with his son Hugh, numbered among the twenty-five illustrious "conservators" of Magna Charta. This Hugh, third Earl, married Maud, the eldest of the three great Pembroke co-heiresses; and their son Roger obtained from Henry III., in her right, the great hereditary office of Earl Marshal of England. In 1247, "the King solemnly gave the Marshal's Rod into her" (the Countess Maud's) "hands, in regard of her seniority in the inheritance of Walter Marischal, sometime Earl of Pembroke; which she thereupon delivered unto this Earl Roger, her son and heir."

Earl Roger, "noted for his singular skill in all warlike exercises," was one of the most accomplished knights of his day; and had few equals either in the tilt-yard^[46] or the field. His domain contained one hundred and sixty-two knight's fees: and he stands forth in history as the true type of the great feudal Seigneur, haughty in bearing and fearless of tongue, whose power in the realm might challenge—if it did not threaten—the authority of the King himself. His name is brought prominently before us in all the transactions of Henry III.'s reign; and Dugdale has preserved two characteristic anecdotes of him. In 1248, "having advertisement that the Earl of Gisnes was arrived in England, this Earl caused him to be taken; by reason whereof, a great complaint was made. Whereupon, being sent for to give answer thereunto, he told the King, That when he himself went as Ambassador to the Council at Lions, riding through the territories of that Earl, instead of kind usage, for the many favours he had received from the King, he was shamefully dealt with, having his Horses and Servants detained, until he had satisfied their unreasonable demands for his passage: which incivility, he had now only retaliated to him, passing through his Lands, saying to the King, 'Sir, I do hold my Land as freely of you, as he holds his of the King of France, and am an Earl as well as he. How happens it then, that he hath power to make merchandise of the Ways and Air unto Passengers?'"

Some years afterwards, he had an altercation with the King himself. When "making a just apology for Robert de Ros, then charged with some crime that endangered his life, he had very harsh language given him by the King, being openly called Traytor. Whereupon, with a stern countenance, he told the King 'That he lied'; and, 'that he never was, nor would be a Traytor'; adding, 'If you do nothing but what the Law warranteth, you can do me no harm.' 'Yes,' quoth the King, 'I can thrash your Corn, and sell it, and so humble you.' To which he replied, 'If you do so, I will send you the Heads of your Thrashers.' But by the interposing of the Lords then present, this heat soon passed over."

Towards the close of his career, he joined the Baronial standard, and was appointed Constable of Oxford. He died s. p. in 1269, having married the Scottish princess Isabel, daughter of William the Lion, to whose brother, Alexander II. of Scotland, he had been in ward.

The Earldom then passed to his nephew Roger, fifth Earl of Norfolk and second Earl Marshal, the son of Hugh Bigod, appointed Justiciary of England by the Barons in 1257; "a famous Knight, and Skillfull in the Laws of the Land, who stoutly executing the Office of Justitiar, suffered not the rights of the Kingdom at all to waver."

"This great and last Earl of his Family," as Dugdale terms him, was no whit behind his predecessors in spirit and daring. He and another "stout Earl," Humphrey de Bohun, resisted Edward I.'s oppressive and vexatious war taxes, invited the Londoners to stand up for their liberties, and resolutely refused to follow the King to Flanders until he had ratified the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest. He attended his sovereign in the Welsh and Scottish campaigns; but when summoned to go to the war of Gascony without him, he and the Earl of Hereford, then Lord High Constable, claimed the privileges of their tenure. "I will go," quoth Bigod, "if you, Sir King, go in person, and attend you in the fore-front of the army, as I am bound to do by hereditary right; but otherwise I will not go." "But you shall go with others," cried the angry King, "and that without me!" "I am not so bound," replied Bigod, "neither will I go without you." Then the King swore a great oath—"By God! Sir Earl, you shall either go or hang!" "Sir King," retorted Bigod, "I will neither go nor hang"; and "so departed without leave."

Yet this notable passage of arms, and perchance others of like quality, led to no ultimate breach between them; for the Earl, some five years before his death, settled the whole of his possessions on the King. Various motives have been suggested for his so doing: but there were at least three sufficiently cogent ones. He was in want of money; he had no children; and he had quarrelled irretrievably with his heir. "His younger brother. John, a rich dignified churchman, having lent him great sums of money which he exacted again in haste, the Earl constituted King Edward I. heir to all his estates, and delivered also to him the Marshal's Rod, upon condition of having it rendered back to him in case he should have any children; as likewise to have 1000 pension for his life, and 1000 in present from the King to pay his debts.^[47] This instrument was dated from St. John's, Colchester, in 1302."—Morant's Essex. The more completely to exclude this unlucky John from the succession, he at the same time surrendered his Earldom into the King's hands; which was then re-granted to him with limitation to the heirs male of his body.

The settlement signed at Colchester included all his castles, towns, lands, and tenements in England and Wales, with the famous castle of Bungay, which he had received license to rebuild; but reserved Settrington and three other Yorkshire manors, as well as two more in Norfolk. Settrington was, it appears, the residence of his uncle Ralph (the Justiciary's younger son), who married Berta Furnivall, and had a daughter named Isabel, married first to Gilbert de Lacy, and secondly to John Fitz Geoffrey. There is no mention of a son; yet the name existed in Yorkshire at least three hundred years after this; for we find Sir Francis Bigod of Mogreve Castle, in Blakemore, taking an active part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He sent out a circular through Richmondshire and the county of Durham, inviting the people to a muster at Settrington, raised an enthusiastic force, and captured Beverley. He was executed with the other leaders in 1537. The family must have been extinct in 1666, as the name does not occur in Dugdale's Visitation of the county.

A branch of the Bigots settled in Somersetshire, where they owned the parish of Marston-Bigot. "Walter de Bigot was Lord 43 Hen. III., and was succeeded by Richard de Bigot, his son, who, incurring the displeasure of Edward II. by fortifying his mansion here without licence, and disrespecting the King's messenger, forfeited his land here to the Crown."—Collinson's Somerset.