BAGOT, Sir Hervey, 1st bt. (1591-1660), of Field, Leigh, Staffs.

The Bagots were one of Staffordshire’s oldest gentry families, having been resident in the county since the time of the Conquest.28VCH Staffs. iv. 31; ‘Bagot fam.’, Oxford DNB; G. Wrottesley, ‘Hist. of the Bagot fam.’ (Collns. Hist. Staffs. n.s. xi), 3, 6. Their principal residences were at Blithfield, about seven miles east of Stafford, and at Field, near Uttoxeter, both of which they had acquired during the second half of the fourteenth century.29Wrottesley, ‘Bagot fam.’, 29, 43. Members of the family had represented Staffordshire on a regular basis since the mid-fourteenth century, and Bagot’s father Walter Bagot† had sat for Tamworth in 1586.30Wrottesley, ‘Bagot fam.’, 29, 35, 41; ‘Sir John Bagot’, HP Commons 1386-1421; HP Commons 1558-1603.

Bagot, a second son, was apparently destined for a professional career of some kind; and perhaps with this in mind he proved a model student following his admission to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1608. His tutor, Henry Slymaker, assured Walter Bagot that his son ‘liveth here in our college studiously, carrieth himself virtuously and is very religiously addicted’.31FSL, L.a.859. Slymaker himself was dismissed by John Aubrey as ‘a fellow of great impudence and little learning’.32Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 25. However, Bagot was also esteemed and favoured by the college’s president, Ralph Kettell, whom Aubrey thought ‘a right Church of England man’.33FSL, L.a.49, 51, 558, 559; Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 18. In his letters to his father, some of which were in Latin, Bagot promised to apply himself diligently to his studies.34FSL, L.a.53, 58. In 1611, however, his elder brother died, requiring him to exchange his scholar’s gown for the mantle of heir to the family estate and the responsibility of producing an heir of his own; and by the end of 1613 he was married with a child on the way.35Blithfield par. reg.

Bagot’s public career effectively began with his appointment to the Staffordshire bench in December 1623.36C231/4, f. 159v. By 1625, he was also a captain in the trained bands, having received his commission from the county’s lord lieutenant, the future parliamentarian general Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.37Staffs. RO, D1798/HM Chetwynd/115. Bagot’s family had been part of the Devereux affinity in Staffordshire since Elizabethan times.38‘Bagot fam.’, Oxford DNB. Walter Bagot had owed his election at Tamworth to the 2nd earl of Essex, and his brother Anthony Bagot, a member of Essex’s household, had participated in the earl’s ill-fated rebellion in 1601.39‘Bagot fam.’, Oxford DNB; HP Commons 1558-1603. Walter had also served as a deputy lieutenant under the 3rd earl and had acted as his agent in local affairs.40FSL, L.a.554, 757; Staffs. RO, D(W)1721/1/4, f. 25v. Bagot maintained his family’s close connection with the Devereux circle, taking as his second wife a wealthy widow whose eldest son was married to a daughter of Sir Edward Devereux† of Castle Bromwich.41Staffs. RO, D1721/3/227. In contrast to the 3rd earl, Bagot does not seem to have declared openly against the Forced Loan, for he was created a baronet in May 1627, just as the loan was being collected.42R. Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics (Oxford, 1987), 108-9; CB. On the other hand, he appears to have been one of the least active of the Staffordshire loan commissioners.43HP Commons 1604-29. Moreover, the fact that he took the time and effort to make a copy of ‘Rodomontados’ – a widely-circulated manuscript satire against George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham – suggests that he shared Essex’s hostility to the royal favourite.44Staffs. RO, D1721/3/228.

Bagot’s return as senior knight for Staffordshire in the elections to the third Caroline Parliament in 1628 may well have owed something to Essex’s influence in the county.45Supra, ‘Staffordshire’; ‘Sir Hervey Bagot’, HP Commons 1604-29. Nevertheless, it is likely that Bagot enjoyed an electoral interest in his own right as one of the county’s wealthier gentlemen. By the end of the 1630s, his landed income was in excess of £1,400 a year (excluding his wife’s lands in Warwickshire worth £200 a year), and the woods on his estate alone were valued at £10,000.46SP19/95, f. 307; Staffs. RO, D4038/E/11/2. By early 1633, Essex had appointed Bagot one of his deputy lieutenants, and in 1636 he named Bagot, Sir William Bowyer* and Thomas Crompton* as trustees to secure his wife’s jointure.47SP16/233/49, f. 72; HMC Bath, iv. 350. Bagot attended his place on the Staffordshire bench regularly during the personal rule of Charles I, enjoyed the trust of the privy council and was involved in the collection of Ship Money in the county.48Staffs. RO, Q/SO 4, ff. 1-283v; D1721/3/228; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 172. As a deputy lieutenant, he was also involved in mustering forces for the second bishops’ war in the summer of 1640.49SP16/460/8, ff. 16-17; G. Wrottesley, ‘The Staffs. muster of 1640’ (Collns. Hist. Staffs. ser. 1, xv), 202-7; M. C. Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars (Cambridge, 1994), 275-6. Bagot probably had little sympathy for those who objected to the king’s policies. A note among his personal papers concerning the puritan ‘martyrs’ Henry Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne* refers to their ‘schismatical and factious humours’.50Staffs. RO, D1721/3/229. Bagot’s views on such matters may have injected tension into his relations with Essex, who by 1640 was closely associated with Charles’s leading opponents.

Bagot’s failure to stand for election in 1640, or his defeat if he did so, raises the possibility that his support for Caroline policies had lost him the good will of certain sections of the Staffordshire political community, Essex perhaps included. Nevertheless, following the death of one of the knights of the shire, Sir William Bowyer, in March 1641, Bagot was returned for the county in his place at some point that spring.51Supra, ‘Staffordshire’. On 3 May, he took the Protestation, but otherwise made no appreciable impact on proceedings at Westminster until 20 November, when he spoke against adding the name of Walter Aston, 2nd Baron Aston of Forfar, to a list of ‘dangerous papists’ being compiled by the Commons.52CJ ii. 133b; D’Ewes (C), 173-4. Bagot (who had been a friend of Aston’s father) and Sir William Lytton ‘witnessed that they had known him [Aston] long and knew him to be a very moderate man, but could not say that he was a papist’. The godly MP Sir Simonds D’Ewes also spoke on Aston’s behalf and his name was dropped.53FSL, L.a.27; D’Ewes (C), 174.

Bagot’s only appointments in the Long Parliament (four in total) occurred between early February and early April 1642 and included addition to the committees for the custom farmers and for procuring gunpowder. He also delivered several letters to the House concerning Irish affairs in this period.54CJ ii. 414b, 476a, 505b, 517a; PJ i. 331. But with this apparent flurry of activity his parliamentary career, such as it was, came to an end. In June, he was named as a commissioner of array for Staffordshire, and on 24 November he and fellow Staffordshire royalist Sir Richard Leveson were disabled from sitting in the Commons and summoned by the House as delinquents.55Northants. RO, FH133; CJ ii. 862a. The nature of their offence was not spelled out, although presumably it involved raising troops for the king. Bagot’s decision to side with Charles – and thereby against his old patron the earl of Essex, who commanded Parliament’s field army – is consistent with his record of loyal service during the personal rule and his hostility to the likes of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne.

Although Bagot did not bear arms during the civil war, two of his younger sons became royalist officers – Richard, the governor of Lichfield garrison (who died of wounds he received at Naseby), and Hervey, who served as deputy governor of Lichfield until its surrender to Parliament in 1646.56P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales (New York, 1981), 13-14. Bagot’s most obvious contribution to the king’s cause was to attend the Oxford Parliament, signing its letter of 27 January 1644 to the earl of Essex urging him to compose a peace.57Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. Along with his son Hervey, his friend Lord Aston, Sir Richard Dyot* and Ralph Snyede* he was among the residents of Lichfield Close when the garrison surrendered to Parliament in July 1646.58Articles for the Delivering up of Lichfield-Close (1646), 5, 6, 9 (E.345.2). In September, he petitioned to compound, and his fine was set at two thirds of his estate – or £1,340 – subsequently reduced to £1,004, which he did not pay in full until May 1649.59Staffs. RO, D793/78-9; CCC 1476-7. By his own and the Staffordshire county committee’s reckoning his estate was worth a mere £134 a year (not including his wife’s £200 a year jointure and a rent charge of £200), which was remarkably small – less than a tenth of his rental in the late 1630s – even allowing for the fact that he had conveyed some of his property to his eldest son Edward.60SP23/201, pp. 469-71, 473, 479, 481-3. Certainly two of Staffordshire’s leading parliamentarians Sir Richard Skeffington* and John Swynfen* thought it ‘strange ... that a gentleman of his [Bagot’s] quality and report should receive only £130 per annum for his own subsistence’, and they urged the county committee to make further inquiries; but the original valuation stood.61Staffs. RO, D793/31, 34. In the event, Swynfen attempted to help Bagot with his composition proceedings at Goldsmiths’ Hall. But Bagot was advised by his solicitor in September 1647 to ‘bethink you of some other friends in the House or City that have some interest in Mr [John] Ashe* [a leading figure on the Committee for Compounding*] and make use of them’.62Staffs. RO, D793/33, 35, 37, 42. Bagot’s debts by 1648 were put at £3,120, and he was still trying to pay off his creditors two years later.63SP19/95, ff. 307, 309; CCAM 420; Staffs. RO, D5121/1/5/6, 9.

Although Bagot acted to prevent royalist insurrection in Staffordshire in 1655, he was deemed liable for decimation that year by the commissioners under Major-general Charles Worsley*.64Staffs. RO, D793/96, 100. Bagot petitioned the protector, pleading that he had ‘yielded both active and passive obedience to the present government, thereby demonstrating his affections to your Highness’.65Staffs. RO, D793/103. He also joined Sir Richard Leveson and six other Staffordshire royalists in a petition to the protector early in 1656, expressing their regret at the folly of ‘some rash and inconsiderate persons ... whose actions we wholly disown’ and requesting that ‘since we have given no new occasion to be distinguished from the most obedient people of this commonwealth ... we may be freed from such payments and penalties as are now demanded of us by new instructions’.66Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/1/6/36; CCC 1477; HMC 5th Rep. 298. Similarly, a group of unidentified Staffordshire gentlemen petitioned the protector at about the same time, asking leniency for Bagot: ‘a gentleman of a very ancient family ... but of small estate. His carriage has been such as hath expressed peaceful and humble thoughts’.67Staffs. RO, D793/97. Bagot looked to the Staffordshire Cromwellian grandee Sir Charles Wolseley* to press his case in the protectoral council, but Wolseley informed him that no one was granted a discharge from decimation ‘unless they have been in actual service’.68Staffs. RO, D793/106, 108. However, Bagot’s protestations of loyalty may well have influenced the Staffordshire commissioners’ decision to reduce his decimation from £42 to £22 a year.69Staffs. RO, D793/100, 114. At some point in the late 1650s, his name was put down for Staffordshire on a list of possible leaders of a projected royalist uprising, but whether he was prepared to stick his neck out in this fashion seems unlikely.70Bodl. Eng. hist. E.309, p. 21. It was probably merely as a precaution that he and his friend Lord Aston were briefly imprisoned by the council of state in the wake of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion in the summer of 1659.71CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 196.

Bagot undoubtedly welcomed the Restoration, and by July 1660 he was ‘fixed at court’ and asking his royalist friends in Staffordshire to send him speedy notice of anyone speaking ill of the king so that a ‘a severe course’ could be taken against them.72HMC 5th Rep. 298. But he did not have long to enjoy his restoration as a county grandee – which included re-appointment as a deputy lieutenant – for he died on 27 December 1660 and was buried four days later in Blithfield church.73Blithfield par. reg.; Murray, ‘Early hist. of Blithfield’, 81. In his will, he asked to be buried ‘without any costly or sumptuous ceremony’ – a stipulation that probably had more do with the state of his finances than any religious scruples.74Staffs. RO, B/C/11, will of Sir Hervey Bagot, 1661. The fact that his monetary bequests totalled a mere £220 does not suggest that he died a wealthy man. Bagot’s son and heir Edward† represented Staffordshire in the 1660 Convention, and his grandson Walter† sat for the county on six occasions between 1679 and 1693.75HP Commons 1660-90.