Without completing his studies, he served in the army during the Peninsular War from 1809 to 1811 and was wounded in the Battle of Barossa on 5 March 1811.
[1] Though he had not yet completed his studies, he still published "An inquiry into the nature and extent of poetick licence"[2] in London in 1810.
He provided the text for John Gould's A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains (1830–32).
Vigors lent a skin for later editions of Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds.
On 19 August 1835, Vigors and his running mate, in the two-member county constituency, were unseated on petition.