BIGG, Walter (c.1606-59), of St Giles-in-the-Fields, Mdx.

The only certainties about Walter Bigg’s birth are that he was a native of Wallingford, his future constituency, and that he was aged 53 at the time of his death in 1659.24Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 5; Ashmole, Antiquities, i. 48. It is more than likely, however, that he was related in some way to the Walter Bigg who was originally from Benenden, Kent, but who by the late sixteenth century was living at Crowmarsh Gifford, Oxfordshire, directly across the Thames from Wallingford.25R.F. Bigg-Wither, Materials for a Hist. of the Wither Fam. (Winchester, 1907), ped. VI; Vis. Oxon. 1566, 1574 and 1634 (Harl. Soc. v), 182; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi-lvii), i. 171; VCH Berks. iii. 255-6. At least one member of that family, Cecilia Bigg, was a recusant.26Recusant Roll No. 2 (1593-1594) ed. H. Bowler (Catholic Rec. Soc. lvii), 126; H.E. Salter, ‘Recusants in Oxon. 1602-1633’, Oxon. Arch. Soc. lxix, 33, 34, 37-9, 41, 45, 49. The earlier Walter Bigg had a nephew, Richard Bigg (d. 1632), a Merchant Taylor and alderman of London, who settled in St Giles-in-the-Fields.27Bigg-Wither, Materials, ped. VI; Vis. Berks. i. 171; Ashmole, Antiquities, ii. 421-2; R. Dobie, The Hist. of the United Par. of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury (1829), 91; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 435; PROB11/161/510; PROB11/196/166. It is probable that Richard was the man to whom this MP was apprenticed.28Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’ Co. 217. This would also have provided Walter with his first links to St Giles, a connection that would prove to be enduring. He was presumably not the ‘Walter Bigges’, evidently one of the earl’s servants, who gave evidence at the sodomy trial of the 2nd earl of Castlehaven (Sir Mervyn Audley alias Tuchet†) in 1631.29The Arraignment and Conviction of Mervin Lord Audley, Earle of Castlehaven (1642), 7 (E.84.2).

The future MP seems to have been one of Parliament’s more active supporters in St Giles almost from the start of the civil war. On 12 November 1642, when the king’s army was closing in on the capital, the Commons ordered that Bigg and William Boteler (probably not the 1656 MP) call out the local trained band.30CJ ii. 846a. The likelihood is thus that Bigg was already serving in the Westminster Red trained band and by the following year he was certainly commanding its St Giles’s company.31Nagel, ‘The militia of London’, 109. He and his company took part in the unsuccessful siege of Basing House in Hampshire in November 1643 and although some of the Westminster troops disgraced themselves during that siege by refusing to obey orders, the bells of St Giles were later rung to celebrate Bigg’s return to the capital. By 1645 he had been promoted to the rank of major.32Parton, St Giles in the Fields, 359; Dobie, St Giles in the Fields, 108; St Giles-in-the-Fields, Mdx. par. reg. f. 58v; Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 6v; Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’ Co. 217. Meanwhile, in March 1644 he had given evidence at the trial of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, to confirm that houses close to St Paul’s had been demolished during the restoration work on the cathedral.33State Trials, iv. 393.

His military service did not however interrupt his business career for very long. It was a mark of success that by 1646 he had been appointed as a liveryman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.34Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’ Co. 217. Moreover, at some point he was able to begin accumulating substantial property interests in St Giles-in-the-Fields. These would include the major town houses leased by him to Philip, 4th Baron Wharton and Lady Alice Dudley, duchess of Dudley.35PROB11/296/44; H.L. Hopkinson, Report on the Ancient Recs. in the possession of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1915), 94-5. Some of his wealth may have come from brewing.36LMA, COL/CA/01/01/071, f. 17. Another source of his income was probably money-lending, for his claim to the manor of Gaynes Hall at Great Staunton, Huntingdonshire, which he would hold at the time of his death, appears to have come to him as collateral on money he had lent to the Lake family, headed by Lancelot Lake†. He may have acquired his land at Grafham, one of the adjacent parishes, in the same way.37PROB11/296/44; VCH Hunts. ii. 362, iii. 60, 63.

There were other ways in which he was emerging as one of the most prominent figures in his parish. He seems, in particular, to have been associated with the moves to establish the local infrastructure of Presbyterianism. From October 1645 Parliament consistently appointed him as one of the elders of the eleventh classis, which was centred on St Giles.38A and O. The following year he backed the removal of the last vestiges of the Laudian re-orderings by purchasing from the churchwardens ‘the rails that stood about the communion table’.39Dobie, St Giles in the Fields, 108. His epitaph would later praise him as ‘a faithful servant of the lord, a worthy patron of learned, godly and faithful ministers’, who were probably meant to include the vicar of St Giles, Thomas Case, who is known to have been one of his friends.40Ashmole, Antiquities, i. 48; PROB11/296/44.

The political Presbyterians may also have seen Bigg as someone they could trust. In July 1648 the common council of London proposed that a single militia should be created to cover not only the City (as was already the case), but also the suburbs.41LJ x. 364a. Bigg was one of the four officers from the Westminster, Southwark and Tower Hamlets militias that they proposed should then be added to the London militia committee.42Nagel, ‘The militia of London’, 301-2. Similarly, his appointment by Parliament as a militia commissioner for Westminster on 2 December 1648 may have owed as much to his Presbyterian sympathies as to a recognition of his growing local importance.43A and O. He was then probably one of those that some of the Westminster inhabitants had in mind when a fortnight later, after the Commons had been purged, they petitioned against those appointments, alleging that some of the officers in the Westminster militia were ‘malignants against Parliament and the army’, which prompted the Rump to reverse them.44CJ vi. 98a-b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1364; Nagel, ‘The militia of London’, 307-8. On the other hand, Bigg’s appointment as a Middlesex justice of the peace four years later shows that he was willing to serve under the republic, as well as confirming that, within St Giles and the surrounding area, he was now a figure of some stature.45C231/6, p. 245.

He acquired further civic responsibilities in the autumn of 1653 when he was elected as a London alderman for the Castle Baynard ward. His backers on that occasion included such powerful City figures, as the former lord mayors, Thomas Andrewes and Sir John Wollaston.46Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 95, ii. 82. Within months he held an even grander corporation office when, along with James Philips, he served as sheriff of London during the mayoralty of Sir Thomas Vyner.47LMA, COL/CA/01/01/066, f. 386; COL/CA/01/01/068, f. 66v; B.B. Orridge, Some Acct. of the Citizens of London (1867), 237. In June 1654, when the government rounded up various suspected plotters in the capital, Bigg was one of the obvious men to assist in the processing of those who had been arrested on the north-western outskirts of the City.48CSP Dom. 1654, 205. He then followed his year as sheriff with a year as the master of his livery company.49Clode, Guild of Merchant Taylors, 347; Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’ Co. 217. By now he was being routinely appointed to any of the local commissions for Middlesex. His enthusiasm for a Presbyterian form of church government remained strong, although it was not shared by everyone around him. In August 1656 Case reported to the London provincial synod that his attempts to revive the eleventh classis had failed, despite ‘the great help and assistance’ he had received from Bigg. The synod responded by sending a delegation to Bigg to thank him for those efforts.50Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 111-12.

In late 1658 Bigg began to scale back his commitments. On 19 October he resigned as the alderman for Cripplegate ‘by reason of infirmity’.51J.T. Baddeley, The Aldermen of Cripplegate Ward (1900), 71; Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 133. This was probably the point at which he moved back to Wallingford, where he now owned a large house with grounds next to the Thames.52PROB11/296/44. Yet this was also the moment at which he was elected to Parliament for the first and only time. Any doubts about his health were presumably outweighed by his status as a local boy who had made good and who had excellent connections with the capital. He was already well known to Wallingford corporation. In 1650-1, during the mayoralty of William Cooke*, he had made the largest donation (£20) towards the town’s new mace and he had intervened to save one of the local alehouses Cooke wanted to close down. On the latter occasion the corporation minutes described him as ‘a very good friend to this town’.53Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, ff. 5, 6v. More cynically, by late 1658 there may also have been an awareness that he was a wealthy man with health problems who was minded to use part of his fortune for the benefit of his home town. Whether because of ill-health, inexperience or lack of interest, he left no trace in the records of the 1659 Parliament.

On 19 April 1659, four days before Richard Cromwell* was forced to dissolved that Parliament, Bigg drew up his will. He specified that his properties were to be divided between his wife and his five children.54PROB11/296/44. His most famous bequest only came later. Three months after this, on 9 June, he concluded a lease with the Merchant Taylors’ Company by which the company was given a 1,000-year lease on some of his properties in St Giles-in-the-Fields, on condition that they paid £10 a year to the poor of Wallingford and a further £10 a year as a salary for a schoolmaster in the town.55[C.M. Clode], Mems. of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (1875), 326-7.

Within two months Bigg was dead. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried beneath his pew on the south side of the chancel of St Mary’s, Wallingford. The monument subsequently erected to mark the spot assured visitors that he had ‘served his generation with much fidelity, constancy and sincerity, full of a lively faith and hope’.56Ashmole, Antiquities, i. 48; Elias Ashmole ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), iii. 1010; PROB11/296/44; VCH Berks. iii. 539. Several months later his widow acknowledged to the corporation of London that her husband had died owing them £6,000.57LMA, COL/CA/01/01/071, f. 17. She retired to Little Stukeley in Huntingdonshire.58PROB11/340/168; VCH Hunts. ii. 235, iii. 63. Their eldest son, John†, who married one of the daughters of Nicholas Pedley*, sat for Huntingdon in 1689. Bigg’s bequest of the money for a schoolmaster’s salary formed the basis for the foundation of Wallingford Grammar School, which retains links with the Merchant Taylors’ Company and which continues to consider Bigg to be its founder.59VCH Berks. ii. 277, iii. 545; Davies and Saunders, Merchant Taylors’ Co. 217.