In Lent term 1686, when aged 16, Higgons matriculated as a commoner at St John's College, Oxford, but shortly migrated to Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
The main works of Higgons were historical, the major one being A Short View of the English History; with Reflections on the Reigns of the Kings, their Characters and Manners, their Succession to the Throne; and all other remarkable incidents, to the Revolution, 1688 (1723).
A related Historical and Critical Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time was published by Higgons in 1725, and reached a second edition in 1727.
[1] Higgons wrote verses for the 1688 Cambridge University collection Illustrissimi principis ducis Cornubiæ genethliacon, addressed to Mary of Modena, on the birth of her son.
In Examen Poeticum, being the Third Part of Dryden's Miscellany, 1693, were poems by Higgons, and he prefixed lines to William Congreve's Old Bachelor.
He wrote a Jacobite tragedy The Generous Conqueror, or the Timely Discovery (1702) which opened well but was found partisan, according to Charles Gildon.