OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigot, Robert

​PIGOT, Sir ROBERT (1720–1796), lieutenant-general, second son of Richard Pigot of Westminster, by Frances, daughter of Peter Goode, was born at Patshull, Staffordshire, in 1720. George, lord Pigot [q. v.], and Admiral Hugh Pigot (1721?–1792) [q. v.] were his brothers. Entering the army, he served with the 31st regiment of foot (now 1st battalion the East Surrey regiment) in Flanders, and was present at the battle of Fontenoy; the 31st was among the regiments whose conduct is noted with commendation in despatches in the ‘London Gazette.’ In October 1745 the regiment landed at London, proceeding in 1749 to Minorca for three years, and being subsequently stationed in Scotland.
Pigot, who became captain on 31 Oct. 1751, major on 5 May 1758, lieutenant-colonel on 4 Feb. 1760, and colonel on 25 May 1772, was transferred in 1758 to the 70th regiment of foot. This regiment had been formed from the 2nd battalion of the 31st, in which Pigot was then the senior captain. He was with the 70th in the south of England and in Ireland till he joined the 38th regiment of foot (now 1st battalion of the South Staffordshire regiment), of which he became lieutenant-colonel on 1 Oct. 1764. In 1765, after a foreign service of fifty-eight years, the 38th returned from the West Indies; in 1774 it re-embarked for North America; on 19 April 1775 it was engaged at Lexington, and on 17 June at the fiercely contested battle of Bunker's Hill, where the regimental casualties were, killed and wounded, nine officers and ninety-nine non-commissioned officers and men. Pigot was in command, and distinguished himself so highly that George III promoted him to be colonel of the 38th on 11 Dec. 1775. He was gazetted major-general on 29 Aug. 1777. In 1778 he held a command in Rhode Island, and in the same year he succeeded his brother George, lord Pigot of Patshul, as second baronet. The latter left him a share in the celebrated Pigot diamond. He became lieutenant-general on 20 Nov. 1782, and died at Patshull on 2 Aug. 1796. He married, on 18 Feb. 1765, Anne (d. 1772), daughter of Allen Johnson of Kilternan, co. Dublin, and by her he had a daughter, Anne, and three sons—George, his successor, afterwards a major-general in the army; Hugh, a captain in the royal navy; and Robert (d. 1804), lieutenant-colonel of the 30th foot (Gent. Mag. 1804, i. 480).
B. H. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigott, Arthur Leary

Many changes in later editions.
​PIGOTT, Sir ARTHUR LEARY (1752–1819), son of John Pigott of Barbados, was born in 1752. He matriculated ​at Oxford, from Trinity College, on 17 Oct. 1778, having in the preceding year been called to the bar at the Middle Temple, where he was elected a bencher in 1799. He commenced practice in the island of Grenada. Subsequently he was appointed by Lord North a commissioner, under the act of 1780, for taking the public accounts. In 1783 he was made K.C., and in May 1787 was appointed solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales. He practised at the common-law bar until 1793, when he migrated to the court of chancery. In the administration of ‘All the Talents’ he became attorney-general (12 Feb. 1806) and knighted, entering parliament on 21 Feb. for Steyning. On the dissolution in the autumn he was returned (26 Oct.) for Arundel, which he continued to represent until his death. As attorney-general he conducted with conspicuous ability the impeachment of Henry Dundas, first viscount Melville [q. v.] He went out of office on the change of administration in March 1807, and was succeeded by Sir Vicary Gibbs. He was a member of committee on the civil list appointed by Lord Castlereagh in July 1819. He died at Eastbourne on 6 Sept. following. His wife survived him.
J. M. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigott, Gillery

​PIGOTT, Sir GILLERY (1813–1875), baron of the exchequer, fourth son of Paynton Pigott, who in 1836 assumed the additional names of Stainsby-Conant, was born at Oxford in 1813. His mother was Lucy, third daughter of Richard Drope Gough. He was educated under the Rev. William Carmalt of Putney, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple on 3 May 1839, went the Oxford circuit, and was made counsel to the inland revenue department in May 1854. In 1856 he became a serjeant-at-law, and in the following year received a patent of precedence. As a liberal, he sat in parliament for Reading from October 1860 to October 1863. He advocated reform in the anomalous laws of Jersey, but his proposed bill did not proceed ​beyond a second reading. In December 1857 he was chosen recorder of Hereford, and on 2 Oct. 1863 was appointed a baron of the court of exchequer, and on 1 Nov. knighted by patent. No judge administered justice with a stricter impartiality. He took a prominent part in the discussion of many social questions. He died at Sherfield Hill House, Basingstoke, on 28 April 1875, after being thrown from his horse.
He married, in 1836, Frances, only child of Thomas Duke of Ashday Hall, near Halifax, by whom he had a family, which included Arthur Gough Pigott and Rosalie Pigott.
The judge published ‘Reports of Cases decided in the Court of Common Pleas, on Appeal from the Decisions of the Revising Barristers,’ 1844–6.
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigott, Nathaniel

​PIGOTT, NATHANIEL (d. 1804), astronomer, born at Whitton, Middlesex, was the son of Ralph Pigott of Whitton by his wife Alethea, daughter of the eighth Viscount Fairfax. He may have been the grandson of Nathaniel Pigott, barrister-at-law (1661–1737), a Roman catholic and intimate friend of Pope, who eulogised him in an epitaph inscribed in the parish church of Twickenham (Cobbett, Memorials of Twickenham, p. 97). The younger Nathaniel Pigott married Anna Mathurina, daughter of Monsieur de Bériol, and spent some years at Caen in Normandy for the education of his children. The Academy of Sciences of Caen chose him a foreign member about 1764, and he observed there, with a Dollond's six-foot achromatic, the partial solar eclipse of 16 Aug. 1765 (Phil. Trans. lvii. 402). His observations of the transit of Venus on 3 June 1769 were transmitted to the Paris Academy of Sciences; his meteorological record at Caen, from 1765 to 1769, to the Royal Society of London, of which body he was elected a fellow on 16 Jan. 1772. He was in friendly relations with Sir William Herschel.
Happening to be in Brussels on his way to Spa in 1772, he undertook, at the request of the government, to determine the geographical positions of the principal towns in the Low Countries. The work occupied five months, and was carried out at his own expense, with the assistance of his son Edward and of his servants. The longitudes were obtained from observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, the latitudes by means of meridian altitudes taken with a Bird's quadrant lent by the Royal Society. Pigott described these operations in a letter to Dr. Maskelyne, dated Louvain, 11 Aug. 1775 (ib. lxvii. 182), and their results were printed at large in the ‘Memoirs of the Brussels Academy of Sciences’ (vol. i. 1777). He was chosen a foreign member of the Brussels Academy on 25 May 1773, and a correspondent of the Paris Academy on 12 June 1776.
Pigott spent part of the summer of 1777 at Lady Widdrington's house, Wickhill, Gloucestershire, of which he determined the longitude, and then took up his residence at Frampton House, Glamorganshire, on his own estate. Here he fitted up an observatory with a transit by Sisson, a six-foot achromatic by Dollond, and several smaller telescopes. He ascertained its latitude, and in 1778–9 discovered some double stars (Phil. Trans. lxxi. 84, 347). In 1783 he sent to the Royal Society an account of a remarkable meteor seen by him while riding across Heworth Common, near York (ib. lxxiv. 457); and observed at the Collège Royal, Louvain, a few days after his arrival from England, the transit of Mercury of 3 May 1786 (ib. lxxvi. 384).
Pigott died abroad in 1804. His son Edward is separately noticed. His second son, Charles Gregory Pigott, assumed the name of Fairfax on succeeding his cousin, Anne Fairfax, in 1793, in the possession of Gilling Castle, Yorkshire; he married in 1794 Mary, sister of Sir Henry Goodricke, and died in 1845.
A. M. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigot, David Richard

​PIGOT, DAVID RICHARD (1797–1873), chief baron of exchequer in Ireland, born in 1797, was son of Dr. John Pigot, a physician of high reputation, resident at Kilworth, co. Cork. He received his early education at Fermoy, and graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1819. He devoted himself for a time to medicine, and went through a course at Edinburgh, but eventually decided to adopt the profession of the law. He was for a period a pupil of Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal [q. v.], subsequently chief justice of England; and in 1826 he was called to the bar in Ireland. Through profound legal knowledge and skill in pleading he rapidly acquired extensive practice. He was made king's counsel in 1835, solicitor-general for Ireland in 1839, elected member of parliament for Clonmel, as a liberal, on 18 Feb. in the same year, and was attorney-general from August 1840 to September 1841. He was re-elected for Clonmel in August 1840 and July 1841. In 1845 he was appointed one of the visitors of Maynooth College. Pigot was made chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland in 1846, in succession to Sir Mazière Brady [q. v.], and continued in that office till his death at Dublin on 22 Dec. 1873. In Ireland he was regarded as one of the most learned judges who had ever administered law in that country. He possessed literary attainments of a high order, as well as great proficiency in music, especially that of Ireland. Some of the Irish sketches published by Crofton Croker were written by Pigot when a law ​student in London. A portrait of him appeared in the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ in 1874.
J. T. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pigot, Elizabeth Bridget

​PIGOT, ELIZABETH BRIDGET (1783–1866), friend and correspondent of Lord Byron, born in 1783, probably in Derbyshire, was daughter of J. Pigot, M.D., of Derby, by his wife Margaret Becher (d. 1833) (cf. Thoroton, History of Nottinghamshire, p. 16). She had two brothers, Captain R. H. H. Pigot, who fought at the battle of the Nile, and Dr. John Pigot, a correspondent of Byron (cf. Letters, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7). Miss Pigot lived at Southwell, with which place her mother's family was connected, nearly all her life. In 1804, when sixteen years old, Byron and his mother arrived there, and occupied a house, Burgage Manor, opposite her mother's on Burgage Green. The Pigots ‘received Byron within their circle as one of themselves.’ The first of Byron's letters which Moore prints was written to Miss Pigot. Byron, whom she described as a ‘fat, bashful boy,’ was ‘perfectly at home’ with her (Moore, ed. 1832, i. 99), and of an evening would listen to her playing and sing with her. In 1805 Byron left Southwell for Cambridge, but paid Miss Pigot occasional visits till 1807, and regularly corresponded with her till 1811. When he was at Southwell she acted as his amanuensis (Moore, i. 132). Byron addressed her in his letters at first as ‘My dear Bridget,’ and afterwards as ‘Dear Queen Bess.’ She nicknamed him her ‘Tony Lumpkin.’ To her Byron addressed the poem beginning ‘Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect!’ About 1807 Miss Pigot was engaged to be married; but on the same day she happened to write two letters, one to her lover and the other to Lord Byron. By some mischance she enclosed them in the wrong covers, and the lover, receiving the letter intended for Lord Byron, broke off the engagement. During the rest of her long life Miss Pigot amused herself and her friends with narrating the minute incidents of her intimacy with the poet, and presented to his admirers many scraps of his writing. A competent amateur artist, she decorated the panels of her doors with landscapes; and long before the Christmas card was invented used to send to friends cards which she had painted. Miss Pigot died at her house in Easthorpe, at Southwell, 11 Dec. 1866, and was buried, aged 83, on the 15th. A packet of Byron's letters was said to have been buried with her. Much of her correspondence with Byron appears in Moore's ‘Life.’ In 1892 a manuscript parody by Miss Pigot, entitled ‘The Wonderful History of Lord Byron and his Dog Bosen,’ was sold by a London bookseller to Professor Kolbing of Breslau.
M. G. W.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pelly, John Henry

​PELLY, Sir JOHN HENRY (1777–1852), governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, born on 31 March 1777, was eldest son of Henry Hinde Pelly of Upton House, Essex, a captain in the service of the East India Company. His grandfather, John Pelly, was also a captain in the company's service. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Henry Hinde of Upton. John is said to have been in his youth in the navy. If so, he quitted it without obtaining a commission. It is more probable that he was with his father in the company's service; that he had nautical experience of some sort appears certain. Having settled in business in London, he became in 1806 a director of the Hudson's Bay Company, of which he was afterwards successively deputy governor and governor. In 1823 he was elected elder brother of the Trinity House, and, some years later, deputy master. In 1840 he was a director of the Bank of England, and in 1841 governor. As governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1835 he was mainly instrumental in sending out the exploring parties which, under Dease and Thomas Simpson (1808–1840) [q. v.], two of the company's agents, did so much for the discovery of the north-west passage and of the coast-line of North America. His share in this work is commemorated on the map, where Cape Pelly marks the eastern extremity of Dease and Simpson Strait. On 6 July 1840 he was created a baronet, on the recommendation of Lord Melbourne. The Duke of Wellington was on friendly terms with him. He died at Upton on 13 Aug. 1852. He married, in 1807, Emma, daughter of Henry Boulton of Thorncroft, Surrey, governor of the Corporation for Working Mines and Metals in Scotland, and a director of the Sun Fire Office, and had by her a large family.
J. K. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pember, Robert

​PEMBER, ROBERT (d. 1560), scholar, was admitted fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, 26 July 1524, being described as of the diocese of Hereford. He was one of the group of scholars whose reputation raised that college to the highest place among English centres of learning. He taught Greek to Roger Ascham, with whom he formed a close friendship, and of whose talents he had a very high opinion. His advice to Ascham is summed up in a figurative sentence contained in a letter to him: ‘Use diligence that thou mayest be perfect, not according to the stoical, but the lyrical perfection, that ​thou mayest touch the harp aright’ (cf. Quarterly Review, liv. 346). In 1546, when Trinity College was founded, Pember was appointed the reader in Greek there, while John Dee [q. v.] became under-reader. From Ascham's letters it appears that Pember took much interest in coins, and made a collection. In 1555 he subscribed the Roman catholic articles, and thereby retained his post at Trinity College, where he died in 1560.
He is only known to have written a few Latin verses, viz. a couplet in praise of Ascham's ‘Toxophilus,’ lines to William Grindal, and an elegy on the death of Martin Bucer.
E. C. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pemberton, Christopher Robert

​PEMBERTON, CHRISTOPHER ROBERT, M.D. (1765–1822), physician, was born in Cambridgeshire in 1765. His grandfather was Sir Francis Pemberton [q. v.], lord chief-justice. After education at Bury St. Edmunds, he entered at Caius College, Cambridge, whence he graduated M.B. in 1789 and M.D. in 1794. He was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians of London on 25 June 1796, was Gulstonian lecturer in 1797, was censor in 1796,1804, and 1811, and delivered the Harveian oration in 1806. He was in that year physician-extraordinary to the Prince of Wales and to the Duke of Cumberland, and afterwards became physician-extraordinary to the king. He was physician to St. George's Hospital from 25 April 1800 till 1808. In 1806 he published ‘A practical Treatise on Various Diseases of the Abdominal Viscera.’ It consists of eleven chapters, treating of the peritoneum, the liver, the gall-bladder, the pancreas, the spleen, the kidneys, the stomach, the intestines, and enteritis. His most original observations are that the disease known as waterbrash is rather a result of imperfect diet than of excess in alcohol (p. 101), that cancer of some parts of the bowel may exist for a long time without grave constitutional symptoms (p. 186), and that the over-exertion of muscles may lead to a condition indistinguishable from palsy (p. 157). This last observation is one of the first contributions in English medical writings to the knowledge of the large group of diseases now known as trade palsies. He recommends the use of a splint supporting the hand in cases of bad palsy of the muscles of the back of the forearm, so common as a result of lead-poisoning. The book shows him to have been an excellent clinical observer, who had paid much attention to morbid anatomy. He suffered from intense facial neuralgia or tic douloureux, and the division of several branches of the trigeminal nerve, by Sir Astley Paston Cooper [q. v.], failed to give him any relief. He was obliged, by his disease, to give up practice and to leave London, and died of apoplexy at Fredville, Kent, on 31 July 1822.
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pelling, Edward

​PELLING, EDWARD (d. 1718), divine, of Wiltshire birth, was educated at Westminster School, and was admitted on 3 July 1658 to Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a scholar on 14 April 1659. He was elected minor fellow 1664, and major fellow in the following year. He graduated B.A. 1661–2, M.A. 1665, and D.D. on the occasion of William III's visit to Cambridge in October 1689. From 11 May 1674 to the ​autumn of 1678 Pelling was vicar of St. Helen's, London; from 1 Oct. 1678 till the close of 1691 vicar of St. Martin's, Ludgate; from 3 May 1683 till his resignation on 4 July 1691 prebendary of Westminster; and from 1691 rector of Petworth, Sussex. Before October 1679 he was chaplain to Charles, duke of Somerset. He was also chaplain in ordinary to William and Mary, and to Queen Anne. Pelling died on 19 March 1718 (Historical Register, 1718, Chronological Diary, p. 13). His son Thomas was elected from Westminster to Christ Church in 1689.
Pelling was a stout defender of the Anglican church against both Roman catholics and dissenters. He printed numerous sermons which he preached on public occasions, many before the king or the House of Lords at Westminster Abbey. Besides sermons, and a series of ‘practical discourses,’ Pelling published: 1. ‘Ancient and Modern Delusions discoursed of in Three Sermons upon 2 Thess. ii. 11, concerning some Errors now prevailing in the Church of Rome,’ London, 1679. 2. ‘The Good Old Way …’ London, 1680; a treatise aimed against concessions to dissenters for sake of unity. 3. ‘The Apostate Protestant. A Letter to a Friend occasioned by the late reprinting of a Jesuit's Book about Succession to the Crown of England, pretended to have been written by R. Doleman [i.e Robert Parsons (1546–1610) [q. v.],’ London, 1682; 2nd edition, 1685—an attack on the exclusion bill. 4. ‘The Antiquity of the Protestant Religion. … In a Letter to a Person of Quality,’ London, 1687, 2 parts. In the British Museum copy there follows a manuscript tract attacking Pelling's arguments concerning the ‘use of images,’ with ‘Third and Fourth Letters to a Person of Quality’ vindicating them. 5. ‘A Discourse concerning the Existence of God,’ London, 1696; reissued in 1704, when the title-page describes it as an exposition of ‘the principles of the Epicureans and Hobbists of our age.’ It is dedicated to Queen Anne. Part ii., issued separately, with same title-page, London, 1755.
Pelling also edited in 1688 the ‘Dialecticon’ of John Poynet [q. v.]
W. A. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pellham, Edward

Edward Pelham in the ODNB.
​PELLHAM, EDWARD (fl. 1630), sailor, was a gunner's mate on board the Salutation of London in the service of the company of Muscovy merchants. On 1 May 1630 the Salutation, with two other vessels, under command of Captain William Goodlea, sailed for Greenland. On reaching the Foreland the Salutation was appointed to station there. When within four leagues of Black Point Pellham and seven of her crew were despatched in a shallop to Green Harbour to meet the second ship. Missing both points, the shallop was given up as lost, and the Muscovy fleet returned home. The eight men, whose names Pellham gives, passed the winter in dire privation at Bell Sound. On 25 May 1631 two ships from Hull came into the Sound, followed on the 28th by the Muscovy fleet, again under command of Captain William Goodlea. The eight men were at once taken on board, and on 20 Aug. departed for the Thames. Pellham wrote an account of his privations in ‘God's Power and Providence shewed in the marvellous Preservation and Deliverance of Eight Englishmen left by mischance in Greenland, anno 1630, nine moneths and twelve days, with a true relation of all their miseries, their shifts, and hardship … with a map of Greenland,’ London, 1631; reprinted in vol. iv. of A. and J. Churchill's ‘Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ 1732, 1744, 1752, all folio; by Adam White for the Hakluyt Society, 1855, 8vo; and in Arber's ‘English Garner,’ vol. viii.
The book is dedicated to Alderman Sir Hugh Hammersley, governor of the Muscovy Company and to the Company's assistants and adventurers.
W. A. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gray, Maria Emma

​GRAY, MARIA EMMA (1787–1876), conchologist and algologist, was born in 1787 at Greenwich Hospital, where her father, Lieutenant Henry Smith, R.N., was then resident. She married in 1810 Francis Edward Gray, who died four years later, and had by him two daughters, who survived her. In 1826 she married his second cousin, John Edward Gray [q. v.] She greatly assisted her second husband in his scientific work, especially by her drawings. Between 1842 and 1874 she published privately five volumes of etchings, entitled ‘Figures of Molluscan Animals for the use of Students,’ and she mounted and arranged most of the Cuming collection of shells in the British Museum. She was also much attached to the study of algæ, arranging many sets for presentation to schools throughout the country so as to encourage the pursuit of this subject. Her own collection was bequeathed to the Cambridge University Museum, and her assistance in this branch of his studies was commemorated by her husband in 1866 in the genus Grayemma. He also had a bronze medallion struck in 1863, bearing both their portraits, a copy of which is in the possession of the Linnean Society. Mrs. Gray survived her husband a year, dying 9 Dec. 1876.
G. S. B.