?The Dinton Hermit? ? Inn sign at Ford near Dinton

Image: © D Gore Taken: Unknown

The man depicted is John Bigg (1627-96), who was clerk to two of the Buckinghamshire regicides of the Civil War – Simon Mayne of Dinton Hall Image and Sir Richard Ingoldsby of Image Both were among those who signed the King’s death warrant. It was their clerk John Bigg who, it is believed, was the masked executioner on that sombre occasion. His subsequent behaviour certainly indicates an unquiet conscience, and the inn sign confirms it by including an axe and skull in the bottom right corner. After the arrests of Mayne and Ingoldsby in 1660, Bigg grew melancholy and adopted the life of a recluse, living in an underground cave at Dinton. He clothed himself entirely in a patchwork of leather, hanging three bottles from his belt – for strong beer, for weak beer and for milk. Most days he would walk the eight miles, past the inn at Ford, to Image to get food from the Hampden family who had been parliamentary friends of Mayne, Ingoldsby, Bigg and the other Buckinghamshire conspirators. See the story of the conspirators at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2_ZstVBZSfIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA33#v=onepage&q=&f=true , and the Gallery at: http://www.geograph.org.uk/gallery/the_roundhead_conspirators_of_aylesbury_8777

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