Roger Bigod of Norfolk
Father of the first Earl of Norfolk
Roger Bigod (died 1107) was a Norman knight who travelled to England in the Norman Conquest. He held great power in East Anglia, and five of his descendants were earls of Norfolk. He was also known as Roger Bigot, appearing as such as a witness to the Charter of Liberties of Henry I of England.
Bigod came from a fairly obscure family of poor knights in Normandy. Robert le Bigot, certainly a relation of Roger's, possibly his father, acquired an important position in the household of William, Duke of Normandy (later William I of England), due, the story goes, to his disclosure to the duke of a plot by the duke's cousin William Werlenc.
Both Roger and Robert were rewarded with a substantial estate in East Anglia following the Norman Conquest of England. The Domesday Book of 1086 lists Roger as holding six lordships in Essex, 117 in Suffolk and 187 in Norfolk.
Bigod's base was in Thetford, Norfolk, then the seat of the bishop, where he founded a priory which was later given to the abbey at Cluny. In 1101 he further consolidated his power when Henry I granted him licence to build a castle at Framlingham, which became the family seat of power until their downfall in 1307. Another of his castles was Bungay Castle, also in Suffolk.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger Bigod of Norfolk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.