[2] In his youth he became "a committed Protestant with scholarly theological interests", hearing several sermons daily and corresponding with reformers, including Thomas Garret.
Under Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's successor, he was engaged in advancing in Yorkshire Henry VIII's ecclesiastical reforms.
He fled by sea from Mulgrave Castle, but his ship was forced to land at Hartlepool, where he narrowly escaped lynching by the commons.
[2][5] At some point, however, Bigod came to realize that his own opposition to the King's erastian[clarification needed] intervention in religion was shared by those participating in the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Thus, when those involved in the Pilgrimage, under the leadership of Robert Aske, were pardoned and agreed to disperse on 8 December 1536, Bigod, fearing repression by the King, launched an uprising of his own on 16 January 1537, in concert with his tenant, John Hallam, a yeoman of Watton.
[2] According to Hicks, Bigod's uprising "enabled Henry VIII to wreak revenge on those implicated in the 1536 revolt, very few of whom rose in 1537".
[2] By his wife Katharine he left a son, Ralph, who was restored in blood by Act of Parliament in 1549/50, but died without issue, and a daughter, Dorothy, his eventual heir, through whom the estates came, through her marriage, into the hands of the Radcliffe family.
Copies are in the British Museum and in Lambeth Palace Library, and the preface is reprinted at the end of Sir Henry Spelman's 'Larger work of Tithes' (1647 edition).