BIGGLESWADE, a market town in the Biggleswade parliamentary division of Bedfordshire, England, 41 m. N. by W. of London by the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5120. It lies on the east bank of the Ivel, a tributary of the Ouse, in a flat plain in which vegetables are largely grown for the London markets. The town is a centre of this trade.
Biggleswade (Bichelswade, Beckeleswade, Bickleswade) is an ancient borough by prescription which has never returned representatives to parliament. The borough court was held by the lord of the manor. At the time of Edward the Confessor, Archbishop Stigand owned the manor, which according to Domesday passed to Ralf de Insula. Henry I. granted it to the bishop of Lincoln, under whose protection the borough evidently grew up. In 1547 the bishop surrendered his rights to the king, and in the 17th century Biggleswade formed part of the jointure of the queens of England. Owing to its important position on the Roman road to the north the town became an agricultural centre for the surrounding district. In 1335 Edward III. renewed the bishop’s licence to hold a Monday market, and annual fairs were held here from very early times. Those for horses are mentioned as famous by Camden. In addition to agriculture, Biggleswade was formerly engaged in straw-plaiting and lace manufacture.
BIGHT (O. Eng. bight, bend; cf. Ger. Bucht, a bay, and beugen, to bend), a nautical term for the loop or bent part of a rope, as distinguished from the ends; also a geographical term for a bay between two distant headlands, or with a shallow curve, e.g. the Bight of Benin, the Great Bight of Australia.
BIGNON, JÉRÔME (1589-1656), French lawyer, was born at Paris in 1589. He was uncommonly precocious, and under his father’s tuition had acquired an immense mass of knowledge before he was ten years of age. In 1600 was published a work by him entitled Chorographie, ou description de la Terre Sainte. The great reputation gained by this book introduced the author to Henry IV., who placed him for some time as a companion to the duc de Vendôme, and made him tutor to the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. In 1604 he wrote his Discours de la ville de Rome, and in the following year his Traité sommaire de l’élection du pape. He then devoted himself to the study of law, wrote in 1610 a treatise on the precedency of the kings of France, which gave great satisfaction to Henry IV., and in 1613 edited, with learned notes, the Formulae of the jurist Marculfe. In 1620 he was made advocate-general to the grand council, and shortly afterwards a councillor of state, and in 1626 he became advocate-general to the parlement of Paris. In 1641 he resigned his official dignity, and in 1642 was appointed by Richelieu to the charge of the royal library. He died in 1656.
BIGNON, LOUIS PIERRE ÉDOUARD, Baron (1771-1841), French diplomatist and historian, born on the 3rd of January 1771, was the son of a dyer at Rouen. Though he had received a good education, he served throughout the early part of the revolutionary wars without rising above the rank of private. In 1797, however, the attention of Talleyrand, then minister of foreign affairs, was called to his exceptional abilities by General Huet, and he was attached to the diplomatic service. After serving in the legations in Switzerland and the Cisalpine republic, he was appointed in 1799 attaché to the French legation at Berlin, of which three years later he became chargé d’affaires. As minister-plenipotentiary at Cassel, between the years 1804 and 1806, he took a prominent share in the formation of the confederation of the Rhine; and after the battle of Jena he returned to Prussia as administrator of the public domains and finances. He filled a similar function in Austria after the battle of Wagram. At the end of 1810 he became French resident at Warsaw and was for a couple of years supreme in the affairs of the grand duchy.
The preparation of a constitution for Poland, on which he was engaged, was, however, interrupted by the events of 1812. Bignon, after a short imprisonment at the hands of the allies, returned to France in time to witness the downfall of Napoleon. During the Hundred Days he once more entered Napoleon’s service, and, after Waterloo, as minister of foreign affairs under the executive commission, it was he who signed the convention of the 3rd of July 1815, by which Paris was handed over to the allies. Bignon did not re-enter public life until 1817, when he was elected to the chamber of deputies, in which he sat until 1830, consistent in his opposition to the reactionary policy of successive governments. His great reputation and his diplomatic experience gave a special weight to the attacks which he published on the policy of the continental allies, two of his works attracting special attention. Du Congrès de Troppau ou Examen des prétentions des monarchies absolues à l’égard de la monarchie constitutionelle de Naples (Paris, 1821), and Les Cabinets el les peuples depuis 1815 jusqu’à la fin de 1822 (Paris, 1822).