to Cardinal James Giustiniani, bishop of Albano and protector of the English College. Baggs preached the funeral oration of his cousin, Lady Gwendoline Talbot, Princess of Borghese, on 23 Dec. 1840, at the church of San Carlo in the Corso. In its printed form he inscribed it to the father of the young princess, John, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury.
Four months prior to this Baggs was advanced to the rectorship of the English College, upon the consecration of his predecessor, the future Cardinal Wiseman, on 8 June 1840, as bishop of Melipotamus. During the last ten years of his sojourn in Rome, Baggs, both orally and in writing, held high rank there as a controversialist. Before the Accademia di Religione Cattolica, he read, on 30 June 1842, his 'Dissertazione sul Sistema Teologico degli Anglicani detti Puseyisti,' afterwards published in 8vo, pp. 35, in the 'Annali delle Scienze Religiose, vol. xv. No. 43. In a subsequent number of the same record, vol. xvii. No. 49, appeared, in 8vo, pp. 28, his 'Dissertazione sullo Stato Odierno della Chiesa Anglicana.'
Throughout the pontificate of Gregory XVI, Baggs was the 'cameriere d'onore' upon whom was devolved the duty of presenting all the English visitors, both catholic and protestant, who were admitted to the privilege of a private audience with his holiness. In this capacity he enjoyed a high degree of popularity, not merely among his co-religionists, but among his compatriots generally. His career at Rome was fittingly closed by his elevation to the episcopate. This occurred on 28 Jan. 1844, when, in the church of St. Gregory on the Cælian Hill, he was consecrated Bishop of Pella in partibus infidelium by Cardinal Fransoni, assisted by Dr. Brown, then Bishop of Tloa and afterwards of Liverpool, and by Dr. Collier, the Bishop of Port Louis in the Mauritius. It was in consequence of the death of Bishop Baines that Gregory XVI selected him thus to fill the suddenly vacated office of vicar apostolic of the western district in England. On his departure from Rome the pope made him a present of books, while the students of the English College gave him a costly pectoral cross, and the protestants then residing in the Eternal City purchased for him by subscription a superb crucifix. He formally took possession of his diocese on 30 May 1844, when his arrival at his future home in England was welcomed by a large gathering of the clergy and laity at Prior Park near Bath. There, two days afterwards, he held his first ordination. Visiting his extensive diocese during the course of that summer, he newly organised it in the autumn, by portioning it out, on 2 Oct., into four deaneries. Shortly after taking up his residence at Prior Park, Bishop Baggs delivered a remarkable course of lectures on the supremacy of the pope, in the church, at Bath, of St. John the Evangelist. At the beginning of the second year of his episcopate. Bishop Baggs died at the early age of thirty-nine, on 16 Oct. 1845, at Prior Park. There his remains were solemnly interred in the partially completed new church of the college on the 23rd of that month, being a few years afterwards removed thence to their present place of sepulture in the church of Midford Castle.
[For the authentication of facts in this memoir careful research has been made in the archives of the English college at Rome, the portions of which relating to Bishop Baggs are mostly in the handwriting of his vice-rector and successor as rector, the late Dr. Thomas Grant, afterwards first bishop of Southwark. Reference may also be made to the following authorities: Memorial Notice in the Morning Post, 3 Nov. 1845; another in the Weekly and Monthly Orthodox Journal of June 1849: Memoir with Portrait in the Catholic Directory for 1851, 12mo, pp. 152-155; Oliver's Collections illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, and Gloucester, 8vo, pp. 230-3; Brady's Episcopal Succession in England. Scotland, and Ireland, A.D. 1400 to 1875, 8vo, Rome, 1877, pp. 330-3.]
BAGNALL, GIBBONS (1719–1800), poetical writer, the son of Gibbons Bagnall of Windsor, was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford, 12 July 1735, where he proceeded B.A. 30 April 1741 (Rawl. MS. in the Bodl. Libr.). He afterwards went to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1760. Taking orders, he became vicar of Holm Lacy in Herefordshire, and head-master of the free school at Hereford.
He was collated on 27 May 1760 to the prebend of Piona Parva in the church of Hereford, and on 1 Aug. 1767 to the prebend of Barsham in the same cathedral establishment. He also held for some time the rectory of Upton Bishop: and in 1783 he was presented to the vicarage of Sellack. He died on 31 Dec. 1800, in his 82nd year.
His works are: 1 . 'A Sermon on Exodus XV. 20,' 1762, 8vo. 2. 'Education: an Essay,' in verse, London, 1765, 4to. 3. 'A New Translation of Telemachus, in English verse,' 2 vols., Hereford, 1790, 8vo; 2 vols., Dublin, 1792, 12mo.
[MS. Addit. 19209 f. 33; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Anglicanæ. ed. Hardy, i. 496, 523; Gent. Mag. lxx. (ii.) 1309; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
