- From:
http://burkeseastgalway.com/bigoe-of-newtown-lusmagh-3/
Bigoe of Newtown, Lusmagh © Donal G. Burke 2013
Of Huguenot (French Protestant) origin, Philip Bigoe established himself in the parish of Lusmagh, then in County Galway, in the early decades of the seventeenth century.[i] He was ‘Maister and owner’ of a glass factory, identified at that time by a local settler as a ‘glasshowse’ at Gloster in Lusmagh and was one of the more prominent locally of a number of minor Protestant settlers of both English and French origin established in that area.[ii] By 1641 he was resident at Newtown Castle in Lusmagh, formerly the property of the O Maddens and then the McCooges.
His property was despoiled and his castle at Newtown, where Bigoe, his family, forty-two settler families and twelve soldiers maintained by Bigoe held out following the Insurrection of 1641, was besieged in 1642 by a force of local rebels and, after twelve days, surrendered to the rebels. Bigoe, afterwards forced to pay a large sum of money to the besiegers, obtained quarter and safe passage for himself, his family and the remaining defenders and settler families.[iii]
‘Philipp Bygo of Newtown in the Kings County’ married Susanna, daughter of another of the name Bigoe, by whom he had two sons and three daughters; Phillip, John, Dorothy, Catherine and Mary. All of his children of his first marriage died young, with the exception of Mary, who married John Eyre, Esq. He marries secondly Bridgett, daughter of Sir George Herbert, Knight and Baronet, by whom he had two daughters, Bridgett, who died young and Catherine who married Gilbert Rossan of Dorra.[iv] Having served as High Sheriff of King’s County in 1662, Bigoe died at Newtown in 1666 and was buried in the church at Birr, Kings County.[v]
The funeral entry in the records of the office of the then Ulster King of Arms gave the arms of this Phillipp Bigo as impaled with that of the family of his second wife. In the dexter half of the shield the Bigo or ‘Beygeo’ arms were tricked as Azure, on a chevron between two mullets in chief and a ferret passant in base Argent, a mullet between two ferrets passant Gules. The sinister half of his shield gives the Herbert arms tricked as Per pale Azure and Gules, two lions rampant in chief and a lion rampant in base Argent.[vi]
More on Philip - apparently having come to Ireland with his father Abraham in 1623, his son-in-law Ananias Henzel and glass making in England, then in Ireland by those families:
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/94037/7/WRRO_94037.pdf
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