Richard Bagot marries Catherine Dale

[CarlTheDruid]

I will try to keep living names out of this to avoid anyone being embarrassed, but:

I have been following my Baggott line (my Gt Grandmother's maiden name) and got as far as the early 1800s. I was then approached by a colleague who was also searching a line of Baggotts and invited me to join a tree building web on MyFamily.com where one of the people who had researched the Baggett history had advised that my earliest Baggott was the son of Richard Bagot who was son of Sir William Wagstaffe Bagot.

The story is that this Richard Bagot married a lady called Catherine Dale and had issue of which my line was realted to one of their offspring.

OK, possible I thought, so I did some digging but found that Richard Baggott married into the Howard family and changed his surname to Howard and they had one daughter so could not have carried on the Baggott line.

I got back and told them this and was told that the record was true, that Richard's marriage to Catherine Dale was his first marriage which was kept quiet when he married a second time to Ms Howard as he had no Baggot inheritance and this was a marriage of convenience.

The evidence is from two IGI entries; one a christening of Catherine Dale in Ashby de la Zouch in Leicesterhsire, proving her age was about right for Richard; and secondly a marriage entry between a Richard Bagot and a Catherine Dale. They apparently had several children, one of whom was on my ancestral line.

Maybe this is true and perhaps not; my concerns being:

1. Surely Bagot and Bigod were common names in Normandy, France and the famous Bagods who came over with William the Conqueror would not have been the only Bagods or Bagots; there would have been commoners as well coming to England following the Battle of Hastings. This Richard Bagot could easily have been a common man.

2. Why would Richard Bagot travel from Blithfield (their mansion home in Staffordshire), across Leicestershire to Ashby de la Zouch to marry this woman? Surely she would have been sumoned to Blithfield for their marriage to be recorded in the man's parish? At the time there should have been no embarrassment for Richard or they would not have wed at all. Both christening and marriage are recorded in Ashby.

3. Why does Catherine not appear as Richard's first wife in Burke's Peerage? My MyFamily.com colleagues tell me this is because she was not of peerage lineage so would not have been included.

4. My colleagues tell me that the original record would no longer exist anyway as any record of the marriage may have been "lost" as the second marriage was obviously advantageous to Richard's wealth and status. Yes but then how did the Latter Day Saints Genealogical Project manage to copy it from parish record to microfiche around 1970's? You can't have it both ways - either the IGI shows proof of a parish record or the original record was destroyed!

My gut feeling is that the IGI records pertain to a Richard Bagot and a Catherine Dale who were of common descent; maybe Catherine origianlly from Yorkshire (Dale being comon there) and Richard originally from France (but not closely related to the Bagots of Blithfield), got married in Ashby de la Zouch and were no more famous or infamous then their next door neighbours.

I have contacted the parish records office in Leicester and await their repsonse, but my feeling is even if I prove this couple to be not at all related to the Blithfield Baggotts, my colleagues across the pond will prefer to cling to the Baggottonian Myth and I will be shown the virtual door to their illustrious webpage!

Does any of this ring familiar with anyone here?

thanks for reading to the end of this winding tale!

[pwholt]

For what it's worth, I agree with you, and those across the pond are not correct. Heralds' Visitations would include any marriage, whatever the social status of the parties, otherwise it doesn't prove anything. This goes for the other sources of lineage, such as Burke's. There are very few surnames which don't have people of all social levels carrying it.
As for being shown the virtual door of their illustrious webpage, is it really so illustrious if the information is of questionable validity? pw (whose lineage includes the Yorkshire Dales.)