council unconstitutional, and carried two other resolutions condemning Pigot's imprisonment and the suspension of those members of the council who had supported him. On the other hand, a resolution condemning the conduct of Lord Pigot in receiving certain trifling presents from the nabob of Arcot, the receipt of which had been openly avowed in a letter to the court of directors, was carried. At a meeting of the general court held on 7 and 9 May a long series of resolutions was carried by a majority of ninety-seven votes, which censured the invasion of Pigot's rights as governor, and acquiesced in his restoration, but at the same time recommended that Pigot and all the members of the council should be recalled in order that their conduct might be more effectually inquired into. Owing to Lord North's opposition, Governor Johnstone failed to carry his resolutions in favour of Lord Pigot in the House of Commons on 21 May (Parl. Hist. xix. 273–87). The resolutions of the proprietors having been confirmed by the court of directors, Pigot was restored to his office by a commission under the company's seal of 10 June 1777, and was directed within one week to give up the government to his successor and forthwith to return to England.
Meantime Pigot died on 11 May 1777, while under confinement at the Company's Garden House, near Fort St. George, whither he had been allowed to return for change of air in the previous month. At the inquest held after his death the jury recorded a verdict of wilful murder against all those who had been concerned in Pigot's arrest. The accusations of foul play which were freely made at the time were without any foundation, and no unnecessary harshness appears to have attended his imprisonment. The real contest throughout had been between the nabob of Arcot and the raja of Tanjore. Each member of the council took a side, and, though Pigot greatly exceeded his powers while endeavouring to carry out the instructions of the directors, his antagonists were clearly not justified in deposing him. Both parties in the council were greatly to be blamed, and that they were both actuated by interested motives there can be little reason to doubt. The proceedings before the coroner were held to be irregular by the supreme court of judicature in Bengal, and nothing came of the inquiry instituted by the company. On 16 April 1779 Admiral Hugh Pigot brought the subject of his brother's deposition before the House of Commons. A series of resolutions affirming the principal facts of the case was agreed to, and an address to the king, recommending the prosecution of Messrs. Stratton, Brooke, Floyer, and Mackay, who were at that time residing in England, was adopted (Parl. Hist. xx. 364–71). They were tried in the king's bench before Lord Mansfield and a special jury in December 1779, and were found guilty of a misdemeanour in arresting, imprisoning, and deposing Lord Pigot. On being brought up for judgment on 10 Feb. 1780 they were each sentenced to pay a fine of 1,000l., upon the payment of which they were discharged (Howell, State Trials, xxi. 1045–1294).
Pigot was unmarried. On his death the Irish barony became extinct, while the baronetcy devolved upon his brother Robert Pigot [q. v.] He left three natural children, viz.: (1) Sophia Pigot, who married, on 14 March 1776, the Hon. Edward Monckton of Somerford, Staffordshire, and died on 1 Jan. 1834; (2) Richard Pigot, general in the army and colonel of the 4th dragoon guards, who died on 22 Nov. 1868, aged 94; and (3) Sir Hugh Pigot, K.C.B., admiral of the White, who died on 30 July 1857, aged 82.
Pigot was created an LL.D. of the university of Cambridge on 3 July 1769. He is said to have paid 100,000l. for the purchase of the Patshull estate in Staffordshire (Shaw, Hist. of Staffordshire, 1798–1801, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 283). He owned a celebrated diamond, known as the Pigot diamond, which he bequeathed to his brothers, Robert and Hugh (1721?–1792), and his sister Margaret, the wife of Thomas Fisher. Under a private act of parliament passed in July 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. III, cap. cii.), the stone, a model of which is in the British Museum, was disposed of by way of lottery in two-guinea shares for 23,998l. 16s. It was sold as weighing 188 grains at Christie's on 10 May 1802 for 9,500 guineas, and in 1818 it passed into the hands of Messrs. Rundell & Bridge, the jewellers. They shortly afterwards sold it for 30,000l. to Ali Pasha, who, when mortally wounded by Reshid Pasha (5 Feb. 1822), ordered that it should be crushed to powder in his presence, which was done (Murray, Memoir of the Diamond, 2nd ed. p. 67). The diamond is described in the advertisement of the sale in 1802 as weighing 188 grains (Times, 10 May 1802).
There are mezzotint engravings of Pigot by Benjamin Green after George Stubbs, and by Scawen after Powell. ‘An elegy’ on Pigot, in eighty-eight stanzas, was published in 1778 (anon. London, 4to).
[Lord Pigot's Narrative of the late Revolution in the Government of Madras, dated 11 Sept.
