Family and Education

b. 3 Aug. 1702, 1st surv. s. of Sir Edward Bagot, 4th Bt., M.P. Staffs. 1698-1708, by Frances, da. and h. of Sir Thomas Wagstaffe of Tachbrook, Warws. educ. Isleworth and Colney Hatch, Mdx.; Magdalen, Oxf. 1720. m. 27 July 1724, Lady Barbara Legge, da. of William Legge, M.P., 1st Earl of Dartmouth, 8s. 8da. suc. fa. 1712.

Offices Held

Trustee, Radcliffe Lib. Oxf. 1737; gov. Foundling Hospital 1739.

Biography

The Bagots were included in a list of Jacobite supporters sent to the Pretender in 1721.1 Returned as a Tory in 1724, Sir Walter Bagot appears at first to have paid little attention to his parliamentary duties. His brother-in-law, Lord Lewisham, suggested to him that the short session called on George I’s death to settle the civil list

seems to be an opportunity of making some sort of amends for your sins of omission, upon that head, before you offer your service for the next Parliament.2

At the next three general elections he was returned unopposed for the county, consistently voting against the Government. On 26 Feb. 1735 he made his only recorded speech, moving unsuccessfully that a clause be added to the mutiny bill for enabling newly enlisted soldiers to obtain their immediate discharge if they so wished. Re-elected after a bitter contest in 1747, he participated in the subsequent Jacobite demonstration against the Leveson Gowers at the Lichfield races.3 In 1753 he was met on returning from the session ‘by upward of 700 freeholders ... expressing their approbation of his conduct in Parliament in so zealously opposing the bill for naturalizing the Jews’. He retired in favour of his son in 1754, as being ‘an old fellow with one foot in the grave, what at best was never expert in parliamentary business, and now unfit for it’; but allowed himself to be resurrected in 1762 to represent Oxford University.4

He died 20 Jan. 1768.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Stuart mss 65/16.
• 2. 22 June 1727, W. Bagot, Mems. Bagot Fam. 81-82.
• 3. See STAFFORDSHIRE.
• 4. W. R. Ward, Georgian Oxford, 224.