Earsdon – John Pigg

lO EARSDON CHAPELRY.

Whitley, and so passed into the possession of Edward Hall of Whitley, whose trustees sold it in 1793 to Robinson Wakefield of North Shields. In 1824 it was bought from the representatives of George Wakefield, son of the above, by Mr. Hugh Taylor. On Mr. Taylor’s death in 1868, all his landed property went to his nephew, John Taylor of Earsdon, for life, and then to his nephews, the Rev. Hugh Taylor, rector of Wark, and Mr. Charles Henry Taylor of Cornhill. On the termination of that estate, Mr. Charles Taylor of the Coal Exchange, London, greatnephew of the elder Hugh Taylor, succeeded to the property of which he is now owner. Earsdon Town West and Earsdon Moor Edge farms, lying west of Earsdon Grange, became the property,

in the latter part of the seventeenth century, of a Newcastle weaver named John Pigg, a man notorious for his eccentricities, and for the violence or fervour of his religious beliefs. His peculiar habits and unfortunate name united to procure him the hatred or derision of his contemporaries. The Newcastle Company of Bricklayers passed a special resolution ‘that noe brother of the said company shall be imployed to work by or with John Pigg.” An account of the man has been given by the anonymous biographer of Ambrose Barnes, and is as follows : There was one John Pigg, well known both to the king and the duke of York, and for his giddy singularities noted not onely through the country but almost through the kingdom. He usually wore an high crowned hat, a strait coat, and would never ride, but walk’t the pace of any horse, hundreds of miles on foot, with a quarter-staff fenced with an iron fork at one end. He was sometimes land surveyor for the town.” . . . The king and duke of York, to whom he was often trotting, made themselves sport with him, as looking upon him to be a brain-sick enthusiast, and he was no less. . . . He would not onely go to prison when he needed not, but he conceitedly chused the vilest part of the prison for his apartinent, where he continued a long while when he might have had his liberty whenever he pleased. . . .

But as much of Heaven’s favourite as this visionary fancyed himself, everybody knew him to be cursedly covetous, and the end he made answered the disgrace he had thrown upon sufferings for religion, this pig dying in his stye in circumstances not unlike those who lay hands on themselves, or die crazy and distracted.” John Pigg purchased the farm now called Earsdon Moor Edge from Thomas Pearson of Whitehall in the county of Durham, and on November 2 1st, 1 67 1, took a surrender of Earsdon Town West farm from Joshua Gofton of Newcastle, plumber. He died in January, 1688/9,

Welford, History of Gosjorih, p. 24, note.  He was removed from this office, ‘chiefly on account of his nonconformity.’ Presentment of the grand jury for the county of Northumberland, 1688 ; Proc. Soc. Aiitiq. Newcastle, 2nd series, vol. .\. p. 188. ‘ Life of Ambrose Barnes, Surt. Soc. No. 50, pp. 198-199.