General Notes

Th 5th and last Earl of Norfolk of this 1140/1 or 1189 creation, another Roger (le) Bigod, also served as Marshal at Edward I's coronation but was stripped of the office by the King on refusing to take an army to Gascony in early 1297.  After a long-standing dispute with the King over the confirmation of his charters and Magna Charta itself he in 1302 surrendered the Earldom for regrant together with a life interest in additional territorial possessions bringing him an annual income of 1000 pounds (over 24 million in late 1990 pounds).  On his dying childless in late 1306 the Earldom and Marshalcy reverted to the Crown, whereas if he had not made the surrender four years earlier the former at any rate would have passed to his brother.  [Burke's Peerage, on "Norfolk, other creations", p. 2090]

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Roger was the hero of a famous altercation with Edward I in 1297, who commanded him to serve against the King of France in Gascony, while Edward went to Flanders. The earl asserted that by the tenure of his lands he was only compelled to serve across the seas in the company of the king himself, whereupon Edward said, "By God, earl, you shall either go or hang," to which Bigod replied, "By the same oath, O king, I will neither go nor hang." The earl gained his point, and after Edward left for France, he and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, prevented the collection of an aid for the war and forced Edward to confirm the charters in this year and again in 1301. Roger died without issue. His title became extinct and reverted to the crown. The Bigods held the hereditary office of steward (dapifer) of the royal household, and their chief castle was at Framlingham in Suffolk. (EncyclopEdia Britannica, 1961 ed, Vol. 3, pages 556/557, Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk.)

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Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk, and 2nd earl marshal of this family, took a distinguished part in the wars of King Edward I., having previously, however, in conjunction with the Earl of Hereford, compelled even that resolute monarch to ratify the Great Charter and Charter of the Forest. His lordship m. 1st, Aliva, dau. and heiress of Phillip, Lord Basset, and widow of Hugh Despencer, slain at Evesham, and 2ndly, Joane, dau. of John de Avenne, Earl of Bayonne, but had no issue by either. In the 29th of Edward I. the earl constituted that monarch his heir, and surrendered into his hands the marshal's rod, upon condition that it should be returned in the event of his having children, and that he should receive £1,000 prompt, and £1,000 a year for life; in consequence of which surrender his lordship was recreated Earl of Norfolk in 1302, with remainder to his heirs male by his 1st wife, but dying without issue, as stated above, in five years afterwards, the Earldom became (according to the surrender) extinct in the Bigod family, although his lordship left a brother, John Bigod, his heir-at-law, whose right seems to have been annihilated in this very unjust and extraordinary manner, and so completely destroyed that he did not even inherit any of the great estates of his ancestors. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 53, Bigod, Earls of Norfolk]