His paternal uncle William was lord of Aubigny,[1][2] while his father was a supporter of Henry I of England.
His brother William d'Aubigny Pincerna was the king's Butler and father of the 1st Earl of Arundel.
[3] While he entered the king's service as a household knight and brother of the king's butler, William d'Aubigny, in the years following the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106 Nigel was rewarded by Henry with marriage to an heiress who brought him lordship in Normandy and with the lands of several men, primarily that of Robert de Stuteville.
In the last decade of his life he was frequently traveling with Henry I, most likely as one of the king's trusted military and administrative advisors.
[5] Nigel's first marriage, after 1107, was to Matilda de L'Aigle, whose prior marriage to the disgraced and imprisoned Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, had been annulled based on consanguinity.