Individual Details

The first of this great family that settled in England, in the Conqueror's time, possessed six lordships in Essex and a hundred and seventeen in Suffolk, besides divers manors in Norfolk. Roger Bigod was one of the tight-knit group of second-rank Norman nobles who did well out of the conquest of England. His territorial fortune was based on his service in the royal household, where he was a close adviser and agent for the first three Norman kings, and the propitius circumstances of post-Conquest politics. This Roger, adhering to the party that took up arms against William Rufus in the 1st year of that monarch's reign, fortified the castle at Norwich andwasted the country around. At the accession of Henry I, being a witness of the king's laws and staunch in his interests, he obtained Framlingham in Suffolk as a gift from the crown. We find further of him that he founded in 1103, the abbey of Thetford, in Norfolk, and that he was buried there at his decease in four years after, leaving, by Adelisa his wife, dau. and co-heir of Hugh De Grentesmesnil, high steward of England, a son and heir, William Bigod, steward of the household of King Henry I. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 53, Bigod, Earls of Norfolk]. Much of his honour in East Anglia was carved out of lands previously belonging to the dispossessed Archbishop Stigand, his brother Aethelmar of Elham, and the disgraced Earl Ralph of Norfolk and Suffolk. Apart from a flirtation with the cause of Robert Curthose in 1088, he remained conspicuously loyal to Rufus and Henry I, for whom he continued to act as steward and to witness charters. The adherence of such men was vital to the Norman kings. Through them central business could be conducted and localities controlled. Small wonder they were well rewarded. Roger established a dynasty which dominated East Anglia from the 1140s, as earls of Norfolk, until 1306. Roger's by name and the subsequent family name was derived from a word (bigot) meaning double-headed instrument such as a pickaxe: a tribute, perhaps to Roger's effectiveness as a royal servant; certainly an apt image of one who worked hard both for his masters and for himself. [Who's Who in Early Medieval England, Christopher Tyerman, Shepheard-Walwyn, Ltd., London,1996]

Birth	Ca 1060	Normandy, France
Death	9 Sep 1107	Suffolk, England

Spouse	Living
Child	Hugh Bigod 1st Earl of Norfolk (1095 - 1176)
Child	William Bigod ( - 1120)
Child	Maud Bigod (1080 - )
Child	Cecily Bigod (1090 - )