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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
This branch of the Pigotts can be traced back to Adam Pigott (d.?1737), a London merchant, member of the Cutlers’ Company where his mark of a dolphin was registered in 1664, who was residing near Temple Gate in 1676. In 1678 Adam Pigott and James Allen negotiated a lease from the Duke of Bedford for the construction of Covent Garden Market, with the obligation to pave the area and construct houses and shops. Adam’s wife is not mentioned in his will and presumably predeceased him, but there were at least two sons, Nathaniel (1661–1737) who died shortly after his father, but through whom this story continues, and Adam (1673–1751) who entered the Society of Jesus at Watten, near St. Omer, was professed in 1694 and, after serving as chaplain at Calehill, Kent, the home of the Darell family, died at Crondon Park, Essex, the seat of the Petre and Mason families, on 30 April 1751. In common with virtually every priest of the period, Adam Pigott used an alias for security reasons, this alias being in many cases the mother’s maiden name. Adam Pigott’s alias was Griffin, which may therefore have been his mother’s original surname.
1 Clark, A. (ed), The life and times of Anthony Wood . . . vol.11 1664-1681, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 351 Google Scholar. Foley, H., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, (London, Burns & Oates, 1878) 3, 541 Google Scholar.
2 Guildhall Library, Add ms 170, lease dated 6 July 1678 between the Duke of Bedford and Adam Pigott and James Allen, tallow chandler, of St. Clement Danes.
3 The Statute of 7&8 W&M (1695/96) interdicted the bar to Catholics and no Catholic was called after Nathaniel Pigott until 1791 when it was again opened. Butler, C., Historical memoirs respecting the English, Irish and Scottish Catholics since the Reformation. 4 vols. (John Murray, 1822) vol.2, 337 Google Scholar.
4 Inderwick, F. A. (ed). A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, vol. 3, 12 ChII (1660)-12 Anne (1714) (By order of the Masters of the Bench, 1901), liv, 248, 266, 270Google Scholar.
5 A Treatise of Common Recoveries, their nature and use . . . (The Savoy 1739). Holdsworth, W., A History of English Law 12, (Methuen, 1938), 378 Google Scholar, described it as fuller and more learned that hitherto available on recoveries. In ten chapters it dealt clearly and comprehensively with recoveries, their origin, nature and use. Simpson, A. W. B., Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law (Butterworths, 1984), 415 Google Scholar, states that ‘He wrote a learned but baffling work . . .’ New Precedents in conveyancing: containing great variety of curious draughts . . . drawn or settled by the most eminent hands [i.e. Nathaniel Pigott and others]. (In the Savoy: printed by E. & R. Nutt & R. Gosling, for John Worrall, 1739).
6 Nathaniel Pigott senior lived near the River Crane; one night in September 1726, when Pope was being driven home from the house of a friend, the coach tipped up as it was fording the river. As Pigott's coachman had been driving at the time, Pope was taken to Pigott’s house to recover. He wrote the epitaph for Nathaniel Pigott, and shortly before Pope’s own death the last rites were administered to him by Edward Pigott OSB.
7 Estcourt, E. E. and Payne, J. O., The English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715 (Burns & Oates, 1885), pp. 64–5, 178, 291Google Scholar.
8 Will, PRO PROB 11/684 sig. 166.
9 List of boys at St. Gregory’s (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1972)Google Scholar, notes the arrival of Edward (Dom Gregory) and Ralph in about 1706, Francis (Dom Dunstan) in 1715, and the two Nathaniels in about 1711 and 1737, respectively.
10 This Jesuit chapel was closed by 1749. Gandy, M., Catholic Missions and Registers 1700–1880 vol. 1 (Whetstone: pivately printed, 1993), 42 Google Scholar. Francis Dun[n] (1722–1757) of Northumberland, its chaplain died at Whitton in 1757. ‘Obituaries of secular priests’, Catholic Record Society 12 (1913), 9.
11 Cobbett, R. S., Memorials of Twickenham (Smith, Elder & Co., 1872), 67 Google Scholar. The burial on 25 March 1754 of another Nathaniel Pigott, perhaps the druggist, is mentioned on p. 68. The epitaph is the subject of letters, 9 Sept and 9 Oct 1784, Gentlemen’s Magazine 54 ii (1784), 652 and 724Google Scholar. It is not clear why the first letter was written so long after the elder Pigott’s death. The anonymous writer confused the generations, taking Pigott’s grandchildren to be his children. The second letter, also anonymous, was written from York by his grandson, Nathaniel Pigott junior.
12 Pope to Caryll, 6 Feb. 1731. Correspondence of A. Pope (ed. Sherburn, G.), [Oxford: Clarendon Press] 3, 173 Google Scholar. Unexpected death is assumed from Ralph’s intestacy; his widow obtained letters of administration in October 1731, PROB 6/107.
13 Rebecca was professed in 1741, taking the name of Ursula; she was abbess from 1773. Catherine was professed in 1743 at the same convent with the name of Xaviera; she died some years prior to 1784. ‘Laity’s Directory’, Catholic Record Society 12 (1913), 57 Google Scholar; Hanson, S. (ed), ‘The register book of professions, etc., of the English Benedictine nuns at Brussels and Winchester, now at East Bergholt, 1598–1856’, Catholic Record Society 14 (1914), 174–203, 196Google Scholar.
14 She was buried in the Monastery de Foret; her life-size portrait in oils was left to the community by Mrs. Barnes, née Fairfax, of Gilling in 1885. Mrs. Bryan Stapleton, History of the Post-Reformation Catholic missions in Oxfordshire (O.U.P 1906), 110; Bertrand, R. de, Histoire du couvent des pauvres clarisses anglaises de Gravelines (Dunkerque: 1857), 132 Google Scholar.
15 At St. Gregory’s the sodality comprised those senior boys invited into the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, membership of which could be useful to them in later life. It functioned until the time of the French Revolution.
16 Memorial to Anna Mathurine de Bériot, Bridlington Priory Church. Prickett, M., Description of the Priory Church of Bridlington (Cambridge, 1831), 115 Google Scholar.
17 Edward Pigott’s Diary, art. 505. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT. (Osborne Coll. fc 80). This was probably the late Thomas Plunkett, schoolmaster, referred to in the interrogatories in the later court brief, Ampleforth Abbey archives FX16 7J16.
18 Northallerton: North Yorkshire Record Office, ZDV(F), Letters, Nathaniel Pigott to Charles Gregory Fairfax, 1763–68. London: Royal Astronomical Society, Pigott Letters, Letter, Robert Waddington to Nathaniel Pigott, 25 October 1762, also refers to the Pigotts’ daughter; there is no mention of her in later letters. Letter, Tycho Wing to Robert Waddington, 18 December 1767, states that Pigott had lost a son.
19 According to H. N. Birt, Downside . . . (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1902), 337, it is uncertain whether Edward and Charles Gregory attended St. Gregory’s school. Amicable letters from the astronomers N.-L. Lacaille, L.-G. Le Monnier, botanist E.-S. Jeurat (also a member of the Caen academy), and E.-F. Turgot (who exchanged seeds and plants with Mrs. Pigott) are among the RAS Pigott papers. In Paris Pigott stayed with, or near, the aristocratic virtuoso J.-B. Bochart de Saron.
20 Nathaniel Pigott’s Diary, 7 May 1771. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT.
21 John Bevis (1695–1771), physician and energetic amateur astronomer. In 1771 he was living at Brick Court, Middle Temple, where, although his view of the sky was limited, he continued to take observations and to encourage others to share his apparatus. He was also foreign correspondent of the Académie des Sciences.
22 For an analysis of the opera and theatre performances mentioned in the diaries of Nathaniel and Edward Pigott, see Gibson, E., ‘Edward Pigott: eighteenth-century theatre chronicler’, Theatre Notebook 42(2) 1988, 62–72 Google Scholar. Gibson was not aware that the Beinecke Library had wrongly catalogued the two diaries as a single document: Edward Pigott’s Diary.
23 Quételet, A, Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques et Physiques chez les Belges (Bruxelles: Hayez, 1864), pp. 291–5Google Scholar.
24 The authors have not traced the original submissions, which may be now in Vienna.
25 ‘Astronomical observations made in the Austrian Netherlands in 1772 and 1773’. Philosophical Transactions 66 (1776), 182–195; ‘Astronomical observations made in the Austrian Netherlands in the years 1773, 1774 and 1775’, Philosophical Transactions 68 (1778), 637–60.
26 Allanson, , Athanasius, O.S.B., Biography of the English Benedictines, Saint Laurence Papers IV [ed. Cramer, Anselm O.S.B., Ampleforth Abbey, 1999]Google Scholar.
27 Brief for the Plaintiff, etc. Ampleforth Abbey Archives, FX16 7J16, and PRO C/ 12/1653/37.
28 In his counter plea of 2 May 1778, Nathaniel claims that ‘finding no available house near Gilling, brought his goods to Scarborough seeking accommodation for his family’.
29 In the plea, dated 6 May 1778, the will is said to have been drawn up by Main of York about 1768. PRO, C12/1648/37.
30 Edward Pigott’s Diary, art. 769. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT.
31 Edward Pigott’s Diary, art. 774–778. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT.
32 Edward Pigott’s Diary, art. 810. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT.
33 Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, 6 (1965), 114—5; Rudge, T., History of the County of Gloucester. (1803), 1, 196 Google Scholar.
34 Victoria County History: Gloucestershire, 6 (1965), 90 Google Scholar.
35 This tenancy may have been in response to the advertisement in St. James’s Chronicle of 8–11 June 1776, 2c, ‘To be let: all that capital mansion house called Great Frampton ... 2 miles from the Bristol Channel, 3 miles from Cowbridge . . .’
36 This house is now 33 Bootham.
37 The observatory housed a 2-foot transit by Sisson, a quadrant by Bird with 2-foot telescope, and a 3-foot double achromatic telescope by Dollond. Astronomical Journal of Edward Pigott, York City Archives, Pigott Papers, Ace 227.
38 Bath: Herschel correspondence. Letter, Pigott to Herschel, 17 June 1782.
39 Edward Pigott’s Diary, Unnumbered entry, June 1783. Beinecke Rare Books Library, New Haven, CT.
40 On 8 May he was introduced by Tiberius Cavallo, on 22 May by Joseph Planta. Royal Society, Journal Book Copy 31 (1782–5), 181 and 193.
41 Astronomical journals of Edward Pigott, York City Archives, Pigott Papers, Ace 227.
42 Bridlington Priory church, memorial stone.
43 Cited in Melmore, S., ‘Nathaniel Pigott’s observatory at York (1781–1793), Annals of Science 9 (1958), 281–6; 285Google Scholar.
44 York: Dean and Chapter Wills, proved July 1804.
45 Goodricke, C. A. (ed), History of the Goodricke family (1897), p. 38 Google Scholar. A tablet in the church of the Holy Cross, Gilling East, was erected by Lavinia Barnes of Gilling Castle in 1875, then the only surviving child of Charles Gregory Fairfax. It commemorates her brother Henry (d.1797), her sister Mary Anne (d.1809) her grandfather Nathaniel Pigott (d.1804) and her aunt Elizabeth Goodricke (d.1839). Above is another tablet to the Fairfaxes, including Anne Fairfax (d. 1793).
46 Cambridge: Trinity College, Wren Library, Turner correspondence 1802–3, letters 51 and 139. Letters, Edward Pigott to Dawson Turner, Lyme, 2 July 1802 and August 1803. Copies of his letters to Herschel, dated 28 May 1805 and 12 October 1806, are in the American Philosophical Society, NUC MS 76–932.
47 Edward’s copies of his letters to P.-F.-A. Méchain (d.1804) and to Méchain’s son, at the Observatory, to A.-L. Jussieu at the Jardin des Plantes, and to J.-B. Delambre and G. Cuvier, secretaries at the Institut, written in France during this period are now among NUC MS 76–932 in the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
48 Séance du 26 Mai 1806 and Séance du 14 Juillet 1806, reported in Procès-verbaux de l’académie des sciences, 3 (1804-7), 354, 389Google Scholar.
49 These, and the Watkins refracting telescope, figure in his will.
50 Stackhouse, J., Nereis Britannica (1795), xxvi Google Scholar.
51 Turner, D., Fuci (1808), vol. 1, 130 Google Scholar.
52 E. Pigott to J. Herschel, 10 May 1821. Royal Society: HS.14.162.
53 PRO, PROB 11/1709 sig. 105.
54 Various landholdings are mentioned in the will. Unfortunately, the record of the valuation at probate for tax purposes has not survived.