The French Bagot. [Teutonic Bag- (v. under Bagg(e + the French diminutive suff. -ot]

“derived from the Carlovingian Counts of Artois, whose descendants were Advocates of Arras, Lords of Bethune, and Castellans of St. Omer, and were amongst the greatest nobles of Flanders.”—The Norman People. Bagod Dominus medietatis de Bramele, holding of Robert de Toeni, Baron of Stafford, is recorded in Domesday; and this same manor of Bagot’s Bromley is still held by his descendants in the direct male line. Few indeed of our great English houses can rival so rare a distinction as an uninterrupted tenure of more than eight centuries. In the time of Cœur de Lion, one of its cadets, Hervé de Bagot, married the heiress of his suzerain, and was the founder of the illustrious line of Stafford, Dukes of Buckingham, so prominent in the history of our Plantagenet and Tudor kings (see Toesni). The brilliant fortunes of the younger branch shed no ray of reflected splendour on the elder, but this, on the other hand, was not wrecked on their sudden collapse. The Bagots remained safe from attainder or forfeiture, in their first Staffordshire home, till, in the latter years of Edward III.’s reign, they removed to Blithfield, another house in the same county, brought by Elizabeth, the heiress of the Blithfields, to her husband, Sir Ralph. From that time to the present it has always been their seat, and generation after generation has been laid to rest and duly recorded in the church, which is full of their memorials. The next heir, Sir John, was appointed Lieutenant of Calais, under Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, in 1407; and both Henry V. and Henry VI. retained “notre trescher et biename Bachelier Johan Bagot” to serve them for the term of his natural life, covenanting to pay him forty marks yearly “le lendemain de pasq.” His descendant, Sir Hervey, was created a baronet in 1627. He was a zealous loyalist, who had to compound for his estate by a fine of ₤1000; and one of his brothers, Colonel Richard Bagot, was Governor of Lichfield for the King, and fell at the battle of Naseby. The second baronet, Sir Edward, “one of the knights of the shire for Stafford in that memorable Parliament that restored all,” lost his eldest son Hervey “of that noble family the twentieth heir, and more (had he survived) than the twentieth knight; a youth of excellent hopes, and intractable to ill; a saint, though a child; a scholar, though an heir,” at the age of fifteen. The whole epitaph—a very long one—reads like the dirge of the last hope of the family; yet, happily, eleven younger brothers were left to carry it on. Only one of them, however, was married—Sir Walter—who represented his native county in seven Parliaments, and was the great-grandfather of William, created in 1780 Lord Bagot of Bagot’s Bromley. The present lord is his great-grandson. Several other manors retain the name, such as Morton-Bagot and Preston-Bagot, in Warwickshire.

The famous old chase of Bagot’s Park, some miles from Blythfield, is believed to contain the grandest oaks in all England. One of them, known as the Squitch oak, is sixty-one feet high and forty-three feet in girth. It is a remnant of the old Forest of Medwood, from which it was detached in very early times, and was long the residence of the family, who had a moated manor-house here.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Bagod.