Hugh Bigod (Justiciar)

Hugh Bigod (* around 1220; † before November 7, 1266 ) was an English nobleman. He served as Justiciar of the Government of the Barons following the enactment of the Provisions of Oxford .

Origin and marriage

Hugh Bigod came from the Anglo-Norman aristocratic Bigod family . He was a younger son of Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk, and Matilda Marshal, eldest daughter of William Marshal and Isabel de Clare . His father died in 1225, and his mother married William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey, for the second time . In the early 1240s, his mother gave him a stately property around Bosham , Sussex , which she inherited from the Marshals family estate after the death of her brothers. In the 1250s, possibly earlier, he inherited the estate of Settrington near Malton in the East Riding of Yorkshire from his father's estates . Before February 1244 he married Joan de Stuteville , the widow of Hugh Wake , who, as Wittum, brought extensive estates to the Wake family in the marriage. He was allowed to administer these lands until the age of their son from his first marriage, Baldwin, in 1259, and his wife was the only daughter and heiress of Nicholas de Stuteville, Lord of Cottingham and Liddel Strength in northern England.

Rise in the service of King Henry III.

During the 1240s Hugh supported his older brother Roger Bigod , together with his brother's bailiff he prevented the royal official John Mansel from receiving the Wilton estate at Pickeringlithe , after all Mansel had to accept it as a fiefdom from Hugh Bigod.

In 1252, Bigod was part of a series of magnates who worked for King Henry III. vouched for the salary of Simon de Montfort when he served as Lieutenant of Gascon . Thereafter, he received several shows of favors from the king such as the office of forest manager of Farndale, the temporary administration of Pickering Castle and the granting of two market rights for his wife's goods in Yorkshire. In 1257 he traveled to Galicia as a royal envoy , and then until 1258 he was a member of the English delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Paris with France . From 1257 at the latest he belonged to the royal council, and in May or June 1258 he was elected to one of the 24 barons who were supposed to work out a reform program for the rule of the king, apparently enjoying both the trust of the king and the opposition of the nobility.

Service as the barons' justiticar

Shortly after he was during the Parliament in Oxford for the royal to the June 16, 1258 Justiciar appointed after this post had not been filled by the 1234th It is not known whether Bigod had any legal training for this legal position, but it is believed that he did not. The barons who had come to power through the Provisions of Oxford expected him above all to remedy the maladministration. It was originally planned that he would only hold the office for one year, but ultimately he stayed in office for over two years, until mid-October 1260. During this time he cared less about the complaints about the royal administration, but had to clarify legal issues and take part in the negotiations of the royal court, which were often quite irrelevant negotiations. In addition, however, he was still a member of the royal council and was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports from 1259 to 1261 . From mid-November 1259 until the end of April 1260, when the king sealed peace with France in Paris, he served as regent. So little had Bigod been able to deal with the complaints that the aristocratic opposition had gathered across the country in the summer of 1258 that parliament decided on a new course of action in October 1259. Bigod had apparently only dealt with complaints from parts of south and east England, now he was supported by five jury courts, which were staffed with professional judges.

Change to the king's side

Ultimately, Bigod tried to appropriate Scarborough and Pickering Castle himself , and he also appealed to the Provisions of Oxford. He even demanded an express majority decision from the royal council to return the castles, but in May 1261 he finally had to hand the castles back to the king. By October 1261, however, he switched to the side of the king, whom he loyally served during the further conflict with the aristocratic opposition, which finally led to the open war of the barons in 1264 . On the side of the king he fought in the Battle of Lewes in 1264 . After the king's defeat, he and his half-brother John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey , fled to France via Pevensey . Only after the victory of the royal party in the Battle of Evesham in August 1265 did he return to England and then remained a close advisor to the king until his death.

progeny

From his marriage to Joan de Stuteville he had several children including:

• Joan ∞ Philip Kyme
• Roger Bigod

In November 1259 Bigod had acquired the guardianship of the underage Philip Kyme from the king, perhaps at that time he had already planned to marry him to his daughter. However, his heir became his son Roger, who in 1270 also became the heir of his uncle Roger Bigod, 4th Earl of Norfolk as Earl of Norfolk.

Web links

• Sir Hugh le Bigod on thepeerage.com , accessed December 17, 2015.
• Paul Brand: Bigod, Hugh (III) (b. In or before 1220, d. 1266). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Cinque Ports: List of Lord Wardens. Retrieved January 14, 2016 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Office vacant (until 1234: Stephen of Seagrave )	Justiciar of England 1258-1260	Hugh le Despenser