Robert Pigott (radical)

He sold his estates in England in 1776, and moved to Switzerland where he supported the French Revolution, promoted vegetarianism and made pronouncements on dress.

In 1776, he imagined that the American Revolutionary War betokened the ruin of England, and sold his Chetwynd and Chesterton estates, worth £9,000 a year.

In the spring of the following year he protested against hats, arguing that they had been introduced by priests and despots, and that they concealed the face and were gloomy and monotonous, whereas caps left the countenance its natural dignity, and were susceptible of various shapes and colours.

For some weeks the cap movement was very popular in Paris, but the remonstrance addressed by Pétion to the Jacobin club put an end to it.

He considered buying and occupying a confiscated estate in the south of France, but Madame Roland, who had doubtless met him at Lyon and was amused at his oddities and fickleness, predicted that he would only build castles in the air.