Hello everyone, this is another posting hoping to find information about people who owned land in Great Horwood between 1400 and 1600 but didn't live there. This time I am asking about the PIGOTT family, gentry who lived at Whaddon and Little Horwood from at least the mid-15th century onwards. Later they spread out to Doddershill and Aston Rowant in Oxon, and no doubt other places as well, and there was an allied family at Beachampton. I already have quite a few detailed references to the Little Horwood/Whaddon family (including their Visitation pedigrees and some of their wills), so what I'm hoping to find is: 1. some kind of summary or overview of the family's history in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially in terms of their social and economic status and activities (if anything like that has ever been published), and 2. a discussion of the family's origins. On the second point, the pedigree given to the heralds by the head of the family in 1566 begins with his grandfather, Robert Pigott of Little Horwood esq, said to have married an heiress of the Giffards of Whaddon. However another pedigree was supplied at the same visitation by the Beachampton Pigotts, and that begins one generation further back - it says that Robert's father was one Richard Pigott, a younger son from a Pigott family which had been long established near Ripon in Yorkshire (though it muddies the waters a little by suggesting that it was this Richard from Yorkshire who married the Giffard heiress and began the Whaddon/Little Horwood line, not his son Robert). The Beachampton family claimed to be descended from a second marriage of the migrant Richard. I can suggest an alternative origin for the family, however - I have a suspicion that they weren't a cadet branch of the Yorkshire Pigots at all, but were local Buckinghamshire peasants made good. The Great Horwood records have many references to the Pigotts of Little Horwood and Whaddon, including the Robert Pigott who was the first generation on their visitation pedigree (he appears in the Great Horwood court rolls from 1465 until 1503, and was clearly of gentry status) and several of his descendants. However he is not the first Pigott in the Great Horwood records - two earlier Piggots, both stated to be of Little Horwood, owned land in Great Horwood in the first half of the 15th century; they were John Pigott (first appeared 1434, died 1450) and his son Richard Pigott (appeared 1440, last mentioned 1459). The nature of the references suggest that the father at least was no more than a wealthy peasant, and the son Richard could also have been of the same status. Could this son Richard be the father of Robert Pigott esq? The dates and location certainly fit, and so does the forename (though it has to be admitted that the Great Horwood records do not make any specific reference to a relationship - but then they don't always). If this peasant Richard was indeed the father of the gentleman then the Beachampton family's pedigree cannot be true, and in fact becomes just a clumsy attempt to cover up lowly origins by claiming a connecton to a genuinely armigerous family in far away Yorkshire - not an uncommon device in those days, when non-gentry ancestry had to be concealed at all costs. Interestingly, Hertfordshire Archives have a will of a John Pygot of Little Horwood proved in 1450 (ref 1AR60v) - this is presumably the John Pigott who was the first Pigott mentioned in the Great Horwood records. I haven't gone to look at it, but its contents might cast some light on the above. So if anyone knows of an printed discussion of the family or their origins, I would be very grateful to hear of it. The contents of the 1450 will would also be gratefully received. And of course if these Pigotts are anyone's ancestors then I'll be happy to supply what information I have about them from the Great Horwood records in return. Thanks very much, Matt Tompkins Centre for English Local History University of Leicester 5 Salisbury Road Leicester LE1 7QR