HIGGONS, Thomas (?1623-91), of Greywell, Hants.

Higgons was from a junior branch of a gentry family established in Shropshire at the latest by the late fourteenth century.20VCH Salop, viii. 207, 260, 276. His father, who was probably about 60 at his birth and who had been licensed to practice medicine in addition to pursuing his vocation as a clergyman, was almost certainly not wealthy.21Al. Ox. However, he was well known to Shrewsbury corporation when recommended to them as their preacher in 1597, he was commended in 1608 as a deserving and longstanding friend by Sir Thomas Egerton, viscount Ellesmere, and he served as a chaplain to James I.22HMC 4th Rep. X, 45-65; Stemmata Botevilliana, 105. At his death in March 1635 or 1636 Dr Higgons apparently bequeathed to his eldest son a mortgage on land in Acton Scott and perhaps additional property.23VCH Salop x. 14. The latter, who was still a pupil at Shrewsbury school, may have been under the guardianship of his childless maternal uncle, Andrew Barker of Haughmond Abbey.24Le Neve’s Peds. 172. Young Higgons proceeded in 1638 to Oxford and in 1640 to the inns of court. It was from the Middle Temple that he wrote to Barker on 11 April 1643 that ‘it will be very hazardous’ to send the brace of pistols and a dagger that had been requested.25Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 2nd ser. vii. 209.

This might reinforce the possibility that royalist sympathies prompted Higgons to leave London at some point within the next two or three years. He travelled to Italy and acquired a facility in the language before returning to England ‘a year or two after the taking of Oxford’. Shortly afterwards he met, and according to his own account was instantly captivated by, the dowager countess of Essex, who had ‘a sweetness and innocency in her, which in my eye seemed to triumph over the scandals she was under’.26Bodl. Rawl. D.361, ff. 15v-16. Elizabeth Paulet had married Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in March 1631, and was thus probably at least ten years older than Higgons. Personal charm, perhaps combined with the prospect of recovering the £4,500 arrears of maintenance from Essex’s estate, evidently counteracted the notoriety she had acquired in the wake of allegations of cuckolding her late husband. However, because she had taken refuge at Oxford in January 1643, her wealth was subject to sequestration as well as to the disputes which had surrounded Essex’s assets and papers since his death in September 1646. The pursuit of her lost income occupied Higgons during and beyond her lifetime.27CP; CCC 1343; Bodl. Carte 117, f. 362; CJ viii. 632, 638.

Meanwhile, the couple lived quietly, moving in literary circles. In 1649 Higgons contributed an elegy to a collection celebrating the short life of Henry, Lord Hastings, the heir of Ferdinando Hastings, 6th earl of Huntingdon, edited by the playwright Richard Brome.28[R. Brome], Lachrymae Musarum: The Tears of the Muses (1649), 11. Two daughters, Elizabeth and Frances, were born about 1650 and 1652.29Stemmata Botevilliana, 137. By about 1655, and probably following the death of his mother several years before, Higgons had come into possession of the mortgaged land in Shropshire left by his father, but had apparently settled at Greywell in Hampshire. At the burial of his countess in Winchester cathedral in September 1656 he delivered an accomplished oration and apologia for her conduct. Accusations of adultery during her first marriage were blamed on the animosity of servants, on the ‘ill-will’ of her brother-in-law Sir Walter Devereux* and on the late parliamentarian general himself ‘being one of the most credulous and jealous natures that ever was’. Undeservedly dogged by rumours of further affairs, the countess had lived circumspectly at Oxford, ‘seldom stirring out of the college, where she lay, but to church’. Once married to Higgons, she had been a model of domesticity, frugality, charity and piety.30Bodl. Rawl. D.361, ff. 12v-16v; Add. A.301, ff. 212-26.

Such a determined vindication may have earned Higgons the gratitude of the Paulet family and thus a toehold in Wiltshire society, while literary achievement earned him notice. He shared with the royalist and Catholic peer John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, a taste for translating continental works. Early in 1658 he published, with a dedication to another royalist peer living in retirement, Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, a translation from Italian of a work celebrating Venetian victory over the Turks, presented to Higgons by ‘that virtuous cavalier Signor Sagredo, when he left England’. The volume included a commendation ‘to his friend’ from the rehabilitated plotter Edmund Waller*, who took the opportunity to advance his case for naval expeditions abroad as a palliative for civil strife.31T. Higgons (trans. G.F. Busenello), A prospective of the naval triumph of the Venetians over the Turk (1658), sigs. A2, B2 (E.1826.1).

Later that year Higgons was elected to Parliament for Malmesbury with a younger man of royalist connections, Sir Henry Lee*. Although he did not receive any committee nominations, he made several contributions to proceedings in a direction subversive of the protectorate. On 23 March 1659 he was a teller with fellow Wiltshire Member Sir Walter St John* for the minority who accepted a report from the privileges committee that inhabitants should not share with freemen the franchise in Dartmouth, Devon.32CJ vii. 619a; Burton’s Diary iv. 236. Five days later he was one of several speakers who echoed the endorsement by Henry Cary*, 4th viscount Falkland, of a motion of Sir George Boothe* seeking a vote rejecting the Other House.33Burton’s Diary iv. 281. On 14 April he was once again narrowly defeated as a teller for those who wished to modify the proposed ordinance enjoining speedy payment of the excise.34CJ vii. 639b. When Quakers presented to the House on the 16th papers which the Commons considered scandalous to magistracy and ministry, Higgons ‘and another young gentleman’ tried to force a division in support of their being dealt with by the serjeant at arms.35Burton’s Diary iv. 445. His final and most notable recorded intervention was on 21 April when he registered disquiet at the confirmation of Richard Cromwell as protector or ‘chief magistrate’, a position he considered equivalent to the doges of Genoa and Venice; Thomas Burton heard him say that in those places ‘one cannot stir out of doors without leave’. He preferred a general appointed for two years.36Burton’s Diary iv. 473.

Higgons greeted the return of the monarchy with a panegyric celebrating the delivery of ‘a sinking state’, which had arrived ‘to the brink of ruin’. ‘England expects’ from Charles II, as from Trajan and Augustus; now the traditional order would be restored.37T. Higgons, A panegyrick to the King, esp. 4-7 (E.1080.4). Elected again to Parliament in 1661 for New Windsor, this time he collected many committee nominations. He soon married a widowed sister of John Grenville, who that year had been created earl of Bath for his services to the new king as a longstanding gentleman of the bedchamber and facilitator of the Restoration. Doubtless assisted by this connection, Higgons was knighted in June 1663, and rapidly accumulated local and national office. He was sent on diplomatic mission to Saxony (1668-9) and Venice (1674-9). A member of the court party and an opponent of Exclusion, he sat again in James II’s Parliament and remained his loyal if inactive supporter after the Revolution. His sons from his second marriage were active Jacobites in exile, and consequently did not enter Parliament.38HP Commons 1660-1690.

Higgons died of apoplexy on 24 November 1691.39Le Neve’s Peds. 172. In his will, he left to his children a substantial amount of plate and jewellery, some of it acquired on his travels; his Shropshire lands had already been settled on his eldest daughters, while his estate in Hampshire went to his son George. He still hoped that the countess of Essex’s arrears would some day be repaid.40PROB11/407/258.