at Oxford, from Trinity College, on 17 Oct. 1778, having in the preceding year been called to the bar at the Middle Temple, where he was elected a bencher in 1799. He commenced practice in the island of Grenada. Subsequently he was appointed by Lord North a commissioner, under the act of 1780, for taking the public accounts. In 1783 he was made K.C., and in May 1787 was appointed solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales. He practised at the common-law bar until 1793, when he migrated to the court of chancery. In the administration of ‘All the Talents’ he became attorney-general (12 Feb. 1806) and knighted, entering parliament on 21 Feb. for Steyning. On the dissolution in the autumn he was returned (26 Oct.) for Arundel, which he continued to represent until his death. As attorney-general he conducted with conspicuous ability the impeachment of Henry Dundas, first viscount Melville [q. v.] He went out of office on the change of administration in March 1807, and was succeeded by Sir Vicary Gibbs. He was a member of committee on the civil list appointed by Lord Castlereagh in July 1819. He died at Eastbourne on 6 Sept. following. His wife survived him.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Royal Kalendar, 1784, p. 173; Gent. Mag. 1819, ii. 371–2; Life of Charles James Fox (1807), p. 294 n; Ann. Reg. 1806, Chron. p. 494; Howell's State Trials, xxix. 606; Members of Parl. (official list); Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly, ii. 130, 351–5; Duke of Buckingham's Memoirs of the Court of England during the Regency, ii. 325; Hansard's Parl. Deb. vol. vii.]
PIGOTT, EDWARD (fl. 1768–1807), astronomer, was the son, probably the eldest son, of Nathaniel Pigott [q. v.] of Whitton, Middlesex. The phenomena of Jupiter's satellites were observed by him with a view to longitude-determinations from 1768; and he watched, at a station near Caen, the transit of Venus of 3 June 1769. He aided his father's geodetical operations in Flanders in 1772, and surveyed the country near the mouth of the Severn in 1778–9 (Phil. Trans. lxxx. 385). On 23 March 1779 he discovered at Frampton House, Glamorganshire, a nebula in Coma Berenices (ib. lxxi. 82), and at York, on 22 Nov. 1783, the comet which bears his name (ib. lxxiv. 20, 460). But although its period has since been computed at 5.8 years, it has not reappeared. His deaf and dumb friend John Goodricke [q. v.] co-operated with him in observing it.
The variability in light of η Aquilæ was detected by Pigott on 10 Sept. 1784, and on 5 Dec. he assigned to its changes a period (about 26 minutes too long) of 7 days 4 hours 38 minutes (ib. lxxv. 127). He also essayed the establishment of an artificial system of photometry. A catalogue of fifty variable or suspected stars was published by him in 1786 (ib. lxxvi. 189), with the remark that ‘these discoveries may, at some future period, throw fresh light on astronomy.’ In a paper on the geographical co-ordinates of York he gave, in the same year, the first practical application of the method of longitudes by lunar transits, independently struck out by him (ib. p. 409). On 3 May 1786 he observed the transit of Mercury at Louvain (ib. p. 389), and after his return to England sent to the Royal Society an account of an auroral display viewed at Kensington on 23 Feb. 1789 (ib. lxxx. 47). His next residence was apparently at Bath, where he discovered the fluctuations of R Coronæ and R Scuti (ib. lxxxvii. 133). Six years later he gave a further discussion, from fresh materials, of the latter star's period (ib. xcv. 131). The conclusion of this paper was written at Fontainebleau in 1803. In it he strove to account for the observed irregular waxings and wanings of stellar brightness by the rotation of globes illuminated in patches. He inferred, moreover, the existence of multitudes of ‘dark stars,’ and surmised that the ‘coal-sacks’ in the Milky Way might be due to their aggregations. Pigott is said by Mädler to have been an early observer of the great comet of 1807. This is the last we hear of him.
[Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Mädler's Geschichte der Astronomie, ii. 21, 265; Berliner astr. Jahrbuch, 1782 p. 146, 1788 p. 161; cf. Herschel's Memoir of Caroline Herschel, 1876, p. 103.]
PIGOTT, Sir FRANCIS (1508–1537), rebel. [See Bigod.]
PIGOTT, Sir GILLERY (1813–1875), baron of the exchequer, fourth son of Paynton Pigott, who in 1836 assumed the additional names of Stainsby-Conant, was born at Oxford in 1813. His mother was Lucy, third daughter of Richard Drope Gough. He was educated under the Rev. William Carmalt of Putney, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple on 3 May 1839, went the Oxford circuit, and was made counsel to the inland revenue department in May 1854. In 1856 he became a serjeant-at-law, and in the following year received a patent of precedence. As a liberal, he sat in parliament for Reading from October 1860 to October 1863. He advocated reform in the anomalous laws of Jersey, but his proposed bill did not proceed
