PIGOT, Gervase (1616-69), of Thrumpton, Notts.

In the 1662 heralds’ visitation of Nottinghamshire, Pigot claimed that he was descended from an ‘ancient family’ that had resided near Thrumpton since at least the thirteenth century – and was accordingly granted arms by his friend Sir William Dugdale.36Vis. Notts. 22; Thoroton, Notts. i, p. vii. Pigot’s father had promoted a learned, preaching ministry in the parish of Thrumpton, but had died when Gervase was an infant and therefore had little influence upon his son’s upbringing. Pigot’s wardship was granted to his mother, who retained as her domestic chaplain the future Presbyterian and ejected minister Ferdinando Poole.37WARD9/162, f. 264v; Calamy Revised, 394.

Pigot’s public career bears the hallmarks of a man raised in a godly household, although his piety before the civil war does not seem to have brought him into conflict with the church authorities. Indeed, in 1637, he sent extracts from what he described as ‘those sharp invectives against the bishops’ to his neighbour, the future royalist Sir Gervase Clifton*, which suggests that he had little sympathy with puritan attacks on the episcopate.38Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 616/1. ‘The printed libel was much larger’, he explained to Clifton, ‘this is only the venom of it, which one of my Lord of London’s [William Juxon, bishop of London] chaplains, a friend of mine, by way of epitome extracted from the whole’. Pigot’s ability to reconcile his ‘painful’ Protestantism with obedience to the established church may help to explain why he became a close friend of the staunchly episcopalian Robert Thoroton, who believed that his ‘sobriety, ingenuity, generosity, piety and other virtues, few of his rank will ever exceed, if any equal’.39Thoroton, Notts. i, pp. vii, 33. Yet this opinion of Pigot was also held by that most zealous of Nottinghamshire puritans, Lucy Hutchinson, the wife of Colonel John Hutchinson*, who described him as ‘a very religious, serious, wise gentleman, true-hearted to God and his country and of a generous and liberal nature’.40Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 73.

It was perhaps Pigot’s friendship with Clifton and other future royalists that encouraged the crown to cultivate his loyalty during the early 1640s. In March 1641, he was added to the Nottinghamshire bench, and in the summer of 1642 he was named to the commission of array for the county.41C231/5, p. 435; Northants. RO, FH133. Despite these gestures of royal trust in him, Pigot opted to side with Parliament in the civil war, and by 9 August 1642 he had been appointed one of the parliamentary deputy lieutenants for the county.42LJ v. 275b. According to Lucy Hutchinson, he took no pleasure in taking sides against his royalist neighbours, ‘but could endure it rather than the destruction of religion, law and liberty’.43Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 73. Although still in his twenties during the civil war and ‘one that wanted not courage’, he chose ‘rather to venture himself as a single person than as a leader in arms and to serve his country in council than in action’. Added by the Commons to the Nottinghamshire county and sequestration committees in 1643, he was an active member of both.44CJ iii. 176b, 225a; SP28/241, unfol.; SP23/195, pp. 917, 919; Bodl. Nalson IV, f. 234; Tanner 57, f. 263.

Pigot became deeply embroiled in the factional struggle that began in 1643-4 between the supporters and opponents of Colonel Hutchinson, the parliamentarian governor of Nottingham.45P.R. Seddon, ‘Col. Hutchinson and the disputes between the Notts. parliamentarians, 1643-5’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xcviii. 71-9. At the root of this feud – which divided the committeemen, leading townsmen and local parliamentarian officers – was disagreement as to the extent of Hutchinson’s powers in relation to the garrison and attendant military units and therefore to the defence of Nottingham itself. Heading the faction that sought to vest military authority in the committee rather than the governor, were James Chadwicke*, John Mason*, Gilbert Millington* and Charles White*. In the governor’s camp were Pigot, Colonel Francis Thornhagh* and – on the rare occasions he visited Nottingham – Henry Ireton*. From ‘the beginning to the ending’ of this dispute, Pigot ‘showed himself a most real and generous friend’ to Hutchinson, and in 1644 he accompanied him to the headquarters of Ferdinando 2nd Lord Fairfax* (the commander of Parliament’s northern army) and then to Westminster in an effort to uphold the governor and his authority.46Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 136, 138-9, 145, 147-8, 150. During his sojourn at Westminster, Pigot was alleged to have called White a whoremaster, Millington a drunkard and Chadwicke a knave.47Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 147. Religious tensions among the Nottingham godly may well have exacerbated this conflict. Chadwicke, Millington and White were Presbyterians, whereas Hutchinson, Ireton and Thornhagh inclined towards religious Independency. No denominational label can be attached to Pigot, however, who was noted simply for his sobriety and godly conversation.

Pigot’s friendship with Hutchinson was probably a factor in his return as a knight of the shire for Nottinghamshire in 1646. Hutchinson had intended to stand in the recruiter elections for Nottingham, but Francis Pierrepont* had written to him promising to support his return for Nottinghamshire – in place of Hutchinson’s late father – if Hutchinson would do the same for him at Nottingham. In the event, Pierrepont was returned for the town at some point in late December 1645 or early 1646, and Hutchinson and Pigot for the county on 16 March.48Supra, Nottinghamshire. Among the signatories to the indenture were Thornhagh and Francis Pierrepont’s elder brother William Pierrepont*.49C219/43/2/78. Pigot was by no means one of the county’s greater landed gentry, and therefore his election probably owed much to his connections with Hutchinson and the backing of the powerful Pierrepont family.

The industry that Pigot showed as a county committeeman apparently did not carry over into his parliamentary career. He was named to only three committees before Pride’s Purge and was granted leave of absence on three occasions during this period.50CJ iv. 534a, 555b, 615a; v. 148a, 339a, 689a; vi. 34b. The clearest indication of his political alignment in the Long Parliament is his presence among those MPs (mostly Independents) who fled to the protection of the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July 1647. On 4 August, Pigot signed the ‘engagement’ of the fugitive Members in which Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.51Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. The other signatories included Francis and William Pierrepont and Hutchinson. Pigot was teamed with Francis Pierrepont on several occasions during 1648. In July 1648, at the height of the second civil war, the Commons ordered Pigot and Pierrepont to help secure Nottinghamshire against royalist insurrection.52CJ v. 626b. The following month they were both named to a committee – their only committee appointment of 1648 – to discover from James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and other Scottish prisoners who had instigated their invasion of England.53CJ v. 689a. In November, the two men were appointed to bring in Nottinghamshire’s contribution to the assessment for the New Model army.54CJ vi. 88a.

Although neither Pigot nor Francis Pierrepont was among those secluded at Pride’s Purge, they both seem to have remained absent from the House between the autumn of 1648 and the spring of 1649. Pierrepont was admitted to the Rump in May 1649 and Pigot on 23 July, following a report from the committee for absent Members – presumably to the effect that he had registered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote (that the king’s answers at Newport were an acceptable basis for settlement).55CJ vi. 202b, In contrast to Pierrepont, who was named to over 20 committees in the Rump, Pigot received only one appointment – to the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of church lands (10 April 1651).56CJ vi. 558a. He continued to receive appointment to county commissions under the Rump, but again it is not clear that he was particularly active at local level after 1648. Despite their political paths diverging under the Rump, Pigot and Pierrepont remained on close terms, and Pigot would contribute to a collection of elegies that was published shortly after the death of ‘my honourable, dear and noble friend Mr Francis Pierrepont’ in 1658. The other contributors included Charles White, the Presbyterian ministers Samuel Coates, Arthur Squire and John Viner, the Anglican ministers Zachary Cawdrey and Edward Stillingfleet, and the Huguenot academic and religious controversialist Lewis du Moulin, who was a friend of the eminent godly divines Richard Baxter and John Owen.57Elegies on the Much Lamented Death of Francis Pierepont (1659), sigs. Br-v; Calamy Revised, 123-4, 457; ‘Zachary Cawdrey’, ‘Lewis du Moulin’, Oxford DNB.

Pigot was among those former Rumpers whom Oliver Cromwell* and the council of officers summoned to attend the Nominated Parliament in the summer of 1653 but who refused to serve.58Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 123. Pigot’s writ of summons, dated 6 June, survives and was inscribed by him with the words ‘I rather chose to be made a sacrifice than to yield obedience to these commands’.59Lansd. 1236, f. 107; Desiderata Curiosa ed. F. Peck (1732), vi. 25; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 34; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 138, 139. His resolve to sacrifice his political career to his scruples – whatever they were exactly – was apparently not weakened by the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653. He seems to have eschewed standing for election to any of the Cromwellian Parliaments, and there is no evidence that he acted upon his appointment in 1654 as an ejector or, the following year, a commissioner to assist Major-general Edward Whalley*.60TSP iv. 146.

It was apparently not until the restoration of the Rump in May 1659 that Pigot resumed an active role in public affairs. Between 25 May and 17 September 1659, he was named to 12 committees, which probably makes this six months the most active of his parliamentary career.61CJ vii. 665a, 668a, 676b, 682a, 691a, 748b, 751b, 763b, 767a, 772a, 780b. Unfortunately, none of these appointments reveals much about where he stood politically in the restored Rump. On 23 September, he was granted leave of absence and apparently did not return to Westminster before the Long Parliament was finally dissolved in the spring of 1660.62CJ vii. 785a. His involvement, with Thomas Margetts*, in investigating the insurrection in Nottinghamshire orchestrated by John Lambert* in the spring of 1660 may be evidence that he now favoured a restoration of monarchy.63Desiderata Curiosa ed. F. Peck (1779), vi. 26. Nevertheless, he was omitted from the Nottinghamshire bench and all other local offices during the course of 1660. He was a patron after the Restoration of the conforming Presbyterian minister John Moore.64S. Copson, ‘The identification of a parliamentary army chaplain’, Trans. Leics. Arch. Hist. Soc. lxviii. 95.

Pigot died, while serving as sheriff of Nottinghamshire, on 9 August 1669 and was buried at Thrumpton on 13 August.65Thrumpton bishop’s transcript; Thoroton, Notts. i. 34. In his will, which featured a strongly Calvinist preface, he bequeathed £20 a year ‘for the maintenance of a learned, godly, orthodox divine, according to the doctrine of the Church of England (and a graduate in one of the English universities) to preach the gospel to the inhabitants of Thrumpton ... and to catechise and instruct them in the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ’. He also advised his son to make the next incumbent of Thrumpton his household chaplain ‘to perform those daily duties of devotion in the family which all but those who know not God ... make conscience of’. Despite the ‘considerable’ debts he claimed to have contracted in the ‘long and costly services of my country’ during the civil-war era, he was able to charge his estate with bequests of over £1,200.66Notts. RO, DD/2008/11/7/3; PR/NW, will of Gervase Pigot, 1669. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.