BAGOT, Edward (1616-73), of Blithefield, Staffs.

Bagot’s ancestors had held manorial property in Staffordshire since Domesday Book, and first represented the county in 1348. His father was returned to the Long Parliament at a by-election in 1641, but disabled as a royalist commissioner of array. He joined the King at Oxford and was ordered to pay £1,340 for his delinquency, but subsequently declared his ‘real affections’ to the Protectorate. Bagot’s younger brothers were in arms for the King, but he appears to have remained inactive at Blithefield, which his father, who was in debt, made over to him on his marriage. He was appointed to the county bench under the Protectorate, and was hence eligible under the last ordinance of the Long Parliament at the general election of 1660, unlike the rest of the family. He was ‘unanimously chosen one of the knights of the shire in that memorable Parliament that restored’ both Church and King. Presumably he supported the Court, but he took no ascertainable part in the Convention, though he doubtless provided his father with the latest parliamentary news to send to his royalist friends. Although he had succeeded to the baronetcy before the next election, he did not stand again, and must have learnt with some anxiety from William Chetwynd of the bill ‘to exclude all persons from all civil and military employment who have acted with the late times’, to say nothing of the high-handed actions of Lord Derby against those suspected of disloyalty during the second Dutch war. By now Bagot had pulled the estate round, and had ‘money in his purse’. In court circles he bore the reputation of being ‘as worthy, plain, and honest gentleman as the earth bears’. He died on 30 Mar. 1673 and was buried at Blithefield. The epitaph already quoted from his ‘stupendous marble memorial’ claims that he was ‘a true assertor of primitive episcopacy in the church and hereditary monarchy in the state. ... By his affable temper, constant hospitality, and inviolable integrity in doing justice, he drew to himself the love and esteem of all.’3Erdeswick, Staffs . 268, 272-3; Mems. Bagot Fam. 60-75, 112-13; Bodl. Carte 37, f. 69; Cal. Salisbury Corresp. ed. Smith, 188; CSP Dom. 1667, p. 419.