Nathaniel
Pigott, (1725–1804), astronomer,
was born at his grandfather's house in Whitton, Middlesex, probably the only son
of Ralph Pigott (d. 1731), a lawyer of the Middle Temple, and his wife,
Alethea, the daughter of William, ninth Viscount Fairfax. His grandfather
Nathaniel Pigott (1661–1737), renowned as a barrister and a friend of Pope,
legally assisted William Fairfax, eighth viscount, of Gilling, Yorkshire, and
acted as conveyancer to most of the Yorkshire Catholic families. The Pigotts
were staunch Catholics and maintained a Jesuit chaplain in their private chapel
at Whitton. Ralph was the only son not educated at Douai; two of his brothers
became Benedictines, while another, Nathaniel, was in business as a druggist at
Brownlow Street, Holborn, London. After Ralph's unexpected death, Alethea and
her children moved to Ormonde Street, Holborn, and before 1752 she left England
and settled in Brussels, near the English Benedictine convent where her
daughters Rebecca and Catherine professed as nuns.
Nathaniel Pigott attended school at St Gregory's Benedictine College, Douai,
about 1737, and later joined his mother. He married in Brussels, on 29 September
1749, Anna Mathurine De Bériot (1727–1792) of Louvain. Of at least four children
born, two sons survived infancy: Edward Pigott
(1753–1825) and Charles Gregory Pigott (d. 1845), both educated in
France. The Pigotts led a vagrant life in various parts of Britain and on the
continent, where, like many other English Catholics, they found life more
congenial. For some years they resided at Caen, in Normandy, and counted among
their friends several of the Paris academicians.
It is not known how Pigott became interested in astronomy, but he had sufficient
money to acquire a number of fine instruments from the best London makers, and
he gained a reputation for his observing and computational ability. He was in
regular communication with J. H. Magelhaens, the so-called Portuguese agent, who
negotiated the procurement or repair of scientific instruments for those who
were unable to deal in person with the London makers.
Our knowledge of Pigott's movements comes from the meteorological and
astronomical journals which he kept with the assistance of his wife and Edward.
He was still at Whitton in 1760, but at Louvain in 1761 and at Caen from 1764 to
1768, where he built an observatory at his house near L'Abbatiale. In 1771 he
was in London and at Gilling, where Edward's French style of dress and manners
caused some comment, and in 1772 he was in Brussels, where he took delivery of a
new 2½ foot reflecting telescope by Heath and Wing, ordered previously in
London. In April that year both he and Edward were presented at court to Prince
Charles of Lorraine and to his prime minister, Prince Staremberg, before
returning to England.
Pigott chanced to pass through Brussels on his way to Spa at a time when a
cartographic survey of the Austrian Netherlands was being proposed. His
assistance was sought, probably at the recommendation of John Turberville
Needham FRS, principal of the Imperial Academy in Brussels, to determine
astronomically, by timing eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, the geographical
positions of the principal towns. Pigott immediately cancelled his visit to Spa,
sent to England for his instruments, and devoted five months to this task.
Equipped with a clock with a gridiron pendulum by Le Paute, a quadrant by Bird,
which Pigott borrowed from the Royal Society, a 6 foot Dollond achromatic
telescope, two barometers by Ramsden and one by Wing, Needham and the Pigotts
proceeded slowly via Namur, Luxembourg, Antwerp, Ostend, Tournai, Brussels, and
Louvain, where they arrived in the summer of 1773. Pigott took the meridian
heights of many stars. He also undertook an unusual experiment to see what
effect the sound of the great bell of Ste Goedule in Brussels had on the
barometer, later described by Sir Henry Englefield, who had joined them in
Brussels. Pigott was elected a foreign member of the Imperial Academy in 1773
and a correspondent of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1776. He freely
communicated his observations, which included transits of Venus and Mercury, and
sightings of comets, some of which were published by learned societies and
others incorporated into anonymous records. He was among the first to study
double stars and those which had a proper movement.
The Pigotts arrived at Gilling in 1774 in order to press claims to the Gilling
estate, but, failing to resolve the affair by means of a private act of
parliament, in the summer of 1777 they lodged with another relative, Lady
Widdrington, at Wickhill in Gloucestershire, where Pigott determined the
longitude. He then moved to Frampton House, Glamorgan, on his own estate, where
he erected an observatory with a transit by Sisson, the 6 foot Dollond
achromatic, and several smaller telescopes. During this time Edward occupied
himself with a survey of the Severn estuary, finding it to be far less broad
than most maps indicated. In 1781 the Pigotts returned to York in the hope of
succeeding to what was left of the Gilling estate. They leased a house just
outside Bootham Bar, close to the minster, and built a substantial two-storey
stone observatory in the garden to house the instruments from Frampton.
Nathaniel observed there until 1785, when they went again to Louvain. It was a
fruitful time too for Edward, who became fast friends with his distant cousin
John Goodricke (1764-1786), said to have become a
deaf mute in his early youth. For his discovery of periodicity and variation of
certain stars, Goodricke was elected to the Royal Society at the age of twenty
one. Edward shared his passion, and on one remarkable occasion, the night of the
10th September 1784, first Edward, then a few hours later John Goodricke, each
made new discoveries of variable stars. Their brief yet historical partnership
was ended by John Goodricke`s premature death. During the 1780s, the result of a
lengthy family quarrel, Edward was cut out of his inheritance, when Ann Fairfax
died in 1793, Charles Gregory Pigott inherited Gilling Castle. He took the name
of Fairfax and married in 1794 a protestant, Mary, the sister of Sir Henry
Goodricke of Ribston, and died in 1845. Nathaniel
Pigott died at his home in York on 4 June 1804 and was buried the following day
in Gilling churchyard. In his latter years he was being looked after by Lavinia
Goodricke, who as sole executrix declared his
personal estate at the time of his death to be under £600.
Edward Pigott continued a somewhat vagrant life but, after brief pauses in
Louvain, York, and London, he settled about 1796 at Bath, where he set up the
instruments from York in an observatory at 15 Belmont, the house he occupied
from about 1808. He corresponded with the botanists John Stackhouse and Dawson
Turner, with whom he shared an interest in seaweeds. When travelling again to
France he was detained in Fontainebleau about 1803 during the Anglo-French
hostilities. In May 1806 he wrote to old friends at the Academy of Sciences,
begging their help in securing permission to return to England, where his
astronomical apparatus and botanical collections were being neglected; in July
the emperor acceded to their request and his passport was returned. He continued
to make observations from Bath for some years, and his letters to Sir William
Herschel report sightings of comets in 1799, 1807, and 1811. In his letter of 10
August 1821, addressed to John Herschel, he mentions his own poor health and
sends greetings to the elderly Sir William, who had befriended his father. He
died unmarried at his home on 27 June 1825. His body was transported to
Bridlington, Yorkshire, in accordance with his wishes, and was buried close to
the grave of his mother on 11 July.
Anita McConnell
J. C. H. Aveling, Catholic recusancy in the city of York, 1558–1791, Catholic RS, monograph ser., 2 (1970) · A. Brech and A. McConnell, ‘The Pigott family: eighteenth century connections with church, science and law’, Recusant History, 25 (2000), 449–60 · J. Scott, ‘York astronomers and instrument makers’, Yorkshire Gazette (24–31 Jan 1925) · papers of Nathaniel and Edward Pigott, City of York RO, Acc 227/8–13, 24 · RAS, Pigott MSS · A. Quételet, Histoire des sciences mathématiques et physiques chez les Belges (1864), 291–5 · J. Lavalleye, L'Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres, et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1772–1972 (1973) · M. Hoskin, ‘Goodricke, Pigott and the quest for variable stars’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 10 (1979), 23–41 · S. Melmore, ‘Nathaniel Pigott's observatory at York, 1781–1793’, Annals of Science, 9 (1953), 281–6 · Archives de l'Académie des sciences, Paris, Pigott MSS · minutes, vol. 95, 10 Jan–20 Dec 1776, Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris, fol. 187r · minutes, vol. 3, 1804–7, Académie des Sciences, Paris, 354, 389 · J. Bernoulli, Nouvelles littéraires de divers pays, 5 (1779), 67; 6 (1779), 43–5 · parish register (burial), Gilling, 5 June 1804 · parish register (burial), Bridlington, 11 July 1825 [Edward Pigott] · A. Brech and A. McConnell, ‘Nathaniel and Edward Pigott, itinerant astronomers’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 53/3 (1999), 309–18