PIGOTT, Robert (1664-1746), of Chetwynd, Salop and Chesterton, Hunts.

Robert Pigott, who came of an old Shropshire family, inherited considerable estates in Huntingdonshire from his maternal uncles, John and Erasmus Dryden,2VCH Hunts. ii. 380. the first of whom had sat for that county in six Parliaments.3PCC 105 Barrett and 154 Smith. Returned as a Whig for the county in 1713, he was re-elected without opposition in 1715, voting for the Administration in all recorded divisions of that Parliament. He did not stand in 1722 or 1727 but came in again at a contested by-election in 1730 and unopposed in 1734, with the support of the 2nd Duke of Manchester.4HMC 8th Rep. ii. 110. Though absent on the excise bill in 1733 and the place bill in 1740, he voted with the Government against the bill for repealing the Septennial Act in 1734 and for the Spanish convention in 1739. At a by-election in November 1739 he was reported to be giving his interest to Charles Clarke who was successful against the 3rd Duke of Manchester’s nominee.5Newcastle to Devonshire, 30 Oct. 1739, Devonshire mss. In June 1740 Lord Sandwich, then in opposition, informed Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that at the forthcoming general election he would be ‘obliged to side with people whom I cannot think friends to their country’, that is with Pigott and Clarke, both Government supporters, as this would ‘be an effectual means of breaking the lord lieutenant’s [Manchester’s] interest’.6Sandwich to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 25 June 1740, Marlborough mss. In the event he did not stand, dying in December 1746.