Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk

Roger Bigod (c. 1245 – bf. 6 December 1306) was 5th Earl of Norfolk.

He was the son of Hugh Bigod (Justiciar), and succeeded his uncle, Roger Bigod, 4th Earl of Norfolk as earl in 1270.

This earl is the hero of a famous altercation with Edward I in 1297, which arose out of the king's command that Bigod should serve against the king of France in Gascony, while he went to Flanders. The earl asserted that by the tenure of his lands he was only compelled to serve across the seas in the company of the king himself, whereupon Edward said, "By God, earl, you shall either go or hang," to which Bigod replied, "By the same oath, O king, I will neither go nor hang."^[1]

The earl gained his point, and after Edward had left for France he and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, prevented the collection of an aid for the war and forced Edward to confirm the charters in this year and again in 1301. William Stubbs says Bigod and Bohun "are but degenerate sons of mighty fathers; greater in their opportunities than in their patriotism."^[2]

The earl had done good service for the King in the past. In August 1282, for instance, contemporary accounts record Bigod "going to Wales on the king's service." In his absence in Ireland, Bigod had sent letters nominating Reginald Lyvet and William Cadel to act as his attorney in Ireland for the year.^[3] Some scholars have wondered how English lords like Bigod and the de Clares kept such tight hold on their Irish lands during a time when the English grip on Ireland was starting to fade. Apparently part of the secret was delegation of authority, as in this case by the earl to his lieutenants Lyvet and Cadel.^[4][5]

Roger married first Alina Basset, daughter of the justiciar Philip Basset (and widow of Hugh Despenser), and secondly Alice d'Avesnes, daughter of John II d'Avesnes, count of Hainaut.

In 1302 the elderly and childless Bigod surrendered his earldom to the king and received it back entailed to the heirs of his body. This had the effect of disinheriting his brother John, and so, when the earl died without issue in December 1306, his title became extinct and his estates reverted to the crown, and were eventually bestowed on Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk.^[6]

Notes

1. ^ Stubbs 138
2. ^ Stubbs 312
3. ^ Calendar of Patent Rolls, August 1282, sdrc.lib.uiow.edu/patentrolls
4. ^ English Lords in Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century Ireland: Roger Bigod and the de Clare lords of Thomond, Beth Hartland, King's College, London, The English Historical Review, 2007, oxfordjournals.org
5. ^ Reginald Lyvet was probably the son of Gilbert de Lyvet, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin for several terms in the early thirteenth century, and was a partisan of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.
6. ^ Tout 139, McFarlane 262

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• McFarlane, K. B. (1973). "Had Edward I a 'Policy' towards the Earls?". The Nobility of Later Medieval England. pp. 248–267. , reprinted from History, 50 (1965), 145-59
• Stubbs, William (1906). The Constitutional History of England in Its Origin and Development, vol. 2. 
• Thompson, E. Maunde (1886). "Roger Bigod, fifth Earl of Norfolk". Dictionary of National Biography. 5. 
• Tout, T. F. (1894). "The Earldoms under Edward I". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series (Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 8) 8: 129–155. doi:10.2307/3678037. JSTOR 3678037.