Pierson was promoted regimental major on 25 Nov. 1880, and in March 1881 was appointed commanding royal engineer of the field force proceeding against the Mahsud Wazíri tribe. He joined the expedition in weak health, but in high spirits at the prospect of command on active service, to which he had long looked forward. Throughout the expedition the royal engineers were much exposed, in road-making, mining, and other arduous duties, to the great heat, and on returning to Bannu Pierson was seized with dysentery, and died rather suddenly on 2 June 1881.
Pierson's name has been commemorated by the corps of royal engineers in the Afghan memorial in Rochester Cathedral, and by a marble tablet, on which is a large medallion relief of his head, placed by the council in Cheltenham College chapel. He married, at Hollingbourn, Kent, in August 1869, Laura Charlotte, youngest daughter of Richard Thomas, who was nephew and heir of Richard Thomas of Kestanog, Carmarthenshire, and of Eyhorne, Kent. There was no issue of the marriage, and the widow survives.
[Despatches; India Office Records; Memoir and Notes in the Royal Engineers' Journal, vols. xi. and xiv.; private information; Vibart's Addiscombe, its Heroes and Men of Note.]
PIGG, OLIVER (fl. 1580), puritan divine, born about 1551, was of Essex origin. He was admitted pensioner of St. John's College, Cambridge, on 6 Oct. 1565, and scholar on 8 Nov. 1566. He graduated B.A. in 1568–9, and was rector of All Saints', Colchester, 1569–71 (Newcourt, ii. 164), of St. Peter's, Colchester, 1569–79, and Abberton in Essex, 1571–8 (ib. ii. 3). In 1578 he was also beneficed in the diocese of Norwich (Davids, Nonconf. in Essex, p. 69), and in February 1583 was temporarily appointed to the cure of Rougham, Suffolk (cf. State Papers, Dom. Eliz. clviii. 79). In July of the same year Pigg, who was an earnest puritan, was imprisoned at Bury St. Edmunds on the charge of dispraising the Book of Common Prayer, especially by putting the question in the baptismal service, ‘Dost thou believe?’ to the parents in place of the child. In a petition for release to the justices of Bury he declared his ‘detestation of the proceedings of Browne, Harrison, and their favourers’ (ib. clxi. 83). Before the next assizes he conformed, and after some little trouble was discharged (Davids, p. 69).
In 1587, at a meeting held at Cambridge, under the presidency of Cartwright, to promote church discipline, Pigg and Dyke were nominated superintendents of the puritan ministers for Hertfordshire (Strype, Annals, iii. i. 691, ii. 479; Urwick, p. 115). In 1589 he seems to have preached in Dorchester (State Papers, Dom. Eliz. ccxxiii. 83), and in 1591 was in London.
Pigg wrote, besides a sermon on the 101st psalm:
- ‘A comfortable Treatise upon the latter part of the fourth chapter of the first Epistle of St. Peter, from the twelfth verse to the ende,’ London, 1582.
- ‘Meditations concerning Prayer to Almighty God for the Safety of England when the Spaniards were come into the Narrow Seas, 1588. As also other Meditations for delivering England from the Cruelty of the Spaniards,’ London, 1588, 8vo (Tanner, Bibl. Brit. p. 599).
[Cooper's Athenæ Cant.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 599; Strype's Annals, III. i. 691, ii. 479; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), pp. 1140, 1246, 1330, 1332; Newcourt's Repertorium; Cat. Cambr. Univ. MSS. i. 463; Urwick's Nonconf. in Hertfordshire, pp. 115, 602–3; Davids's Nonconf. in Essex, p. 69; Dexter's Congregationalism, p. 84 n.; State Papers, Dom.]
PIGOT, DAVID RICHARD (1797–1873), chief baron of exchequer in Ireland, born in 1797, was son of Dr. John Pigot, a physician of high reputation, resident at Kilworth, co. Cork. He received his early education at Fermoy, and graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1819. He devoted himself for a time to medicine, and went through a course at Edinburgh, but eventually decided to adopt the profession of the law. He was for a period a pupil of Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal [q. v.], subsequently chief justice of England; and in 1826 he was called to the bar in Ireland. Through profound legal knowledge and skill in pleading he rapidly acquired extensive practice. He was made king's counsel in 1835, solicitor-general for Ireland in 1839, elected member of parliament for Clonmel, as a liberal, on 18 Feb. in the same year, and was attorney-general from August 1840 to September 1841. He was re-elected for Clonmel in August 1840 and July 1841. In 1845 he was appointed one of the visitors of Maynooth College. Pigot was made chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland in 1846, in succession to Sir Mazière Brady [q. v.], and continued in that office till his death at Dublin on 22 Dec. 1873. In Ireland he was regarded as one of the most learned judges who had ever administered law in that country. He possessed literary attainments of a high order, as well as great proficiency in music, especially that of Ireland. Some of the Irish sketches published by Crofton Croker were written by Pigot when a law
