207 



Memoir of the Rev. John Frederic Bigye, M.A., Vicar of 

 Stamforclham. By the Rev. VV. Featherstonhaugh, 

 M.A., Rector of Edmundbyers, Durham. 



It is a grateful though melancholy task to write the memoir 

 of an old and valued friend, such as was to me the subject of this 

 notice, the Rev. John Frederic Bigge, Yicar successively of the 

 parishes of Ovingham and Stamfordham, in Northumberland ; 

 but, as my recollection of Mr Bigge covers a period of fifty years 

 past, from the time when in 1836 he entered as a Freshman the 

 University of Durham to the date of his death in 1885, 1 may be 

 able to supply a few particulars of his active and useful life. 



Mr Bigge was the sixth son of Charles W. Bigge, Esq. of 

 Linden, near Rothbury, in Northumberland, a property unhappily 

 lost to the family by the disastrous failure of the Northumberland 

 and Durham Disti'ict Bank ; one of a large family of nine sons 

 and three daughters, of whom two sons only now survive ; his 

 mother being a Miss "Wilkinson, daughter of Mr Christopher 

 Wilkinson, a merchant of Newcastle- on-Tyne. 



Born at Linden on the 12th of July 1814, Mr Bigge commenced 

 his school career in 1824 at Ripon with the Rev. W. Plews ; 

 under whose care he remained until the summer of 1829, and 

 where he had as schoolfellows some of the Grey family of Howick, 

 and Mr Walker of Bradley. In October of 1829 he passed to 

 the Edinburgh Academy ; and in 1831 became a pupil of Bishop 

 Terrot of that city, with whom he remained until the spring of 

 1 833, when he migrated to Geneva, and was under the care of 

 Monsieur Thuron for a year, until October 1834. We find him 

 next being prepared for university life under the tutorship of the 

 Rev. W. Boyd, Vicar of Arncliffe in the diocese of Ripon, for 

 whom he thenceforward maintained a life-long and mutual 

 attachment and esteem. In the October of 1 836 he was entered 

 at the University of Durham, then not long established under 

 the auspices of Bishop Van Mildert. He there formed the 

 acquaintance of, with many others, the Rev. John Cundill, a son 

 of the Vicar of Coniscliffe on the Tees, then a fellow-student and 

 one of the earliest on the books of the infant university, now D.D. 

 of Durham, Honorary Canon of the Cathedral, and Vicar of St. 

 Margaret's in that city, who was, to the end of his life, one of his 

 most esteemed and closest friends. In 1839 Mr Bigge took his 



