Pat. pp. 152, 163; Rog. Wend. sub an.). In compliance with a summons from William Marshal (d. 1219) [q. v.], as regent for Henry III, he joined the Earl of Chester at the siege of Mountsorrel Castle in April 1217, and on 20 May took part in the battle of Lincoln. His brother Ivo being on the side of the king's enemies, a writ was issued to the sheriff of Northamptonshire on the 12th to put Robert in possession of Hardingstone and the rest of Ivo's lands. He was one of the witnesses of the treaty of Lambeth on 11 Sept., and is said to have been among the barons who, contrary to the orders of the government, kept possession of the castles and lands of the magnates of the other side (Matt. Paris, Chronica Majora, iii. 33); but his relations with the government during the next few years seem to have been friendly. He was sheriff of Cumberland and a justice itinerant for Northumberland and Yorkshire in 1219 (Foss). A case was pending in the king's court between him and the Countess of Eu in 1220, in which year he attended the second coronation of the king on 17 May (Royal Letters, i. 112, 118). He appears to have disobeyed the order for the surrender of the royal castles, and in 1223 joined the Earl of Chester [see Blundevill, Randulph de] and the malcontents, but made submission with the rest of the party at Northampton, and on 30 Dec. surrendered the castles that he held. He was one of the witnesses to the reissue of the Great Charter on 11 Feb. 1225, was collector of the fifteenth in Westmoreland and the bishopric of Carlisle, and had the custody of the castles of Nottingham, Bolsover, and the Peak. In 1226 he was again a justice itinerant for Northumberland and Yorkshire, and fines were levied before him in 1227 (Foss). He died in 1228, being then in debt to the crown over 1,997l. (Dugdale, Baronage).
He gave lands at Rockley in Wiltshire to the Templars (Monasticon, vi. 834), and, by a charter dated 24 April 1210, Reagill and Milbourne Grange in Westmoreland to the Præmonstratensian abbey of Hepp or Shap in that county (ib. p. 869). His wife Idonea, who was daughter of John de Builly, and died in 1241, confirmed a donation made by her father, and gave a further grant, to the priory of Blythe, Nottinghamshire (ib. iv. 623), granted her manor of Sandbeck in the West Riding to the Cistercian abbey of Roche (ib. v. 503–4), where she desired to be buried, and near which she appears to have resided in widowhood, and founded a chantry in the New Temple, London, for the souls of herself and her husband.
His son John, a minor at the time of his father's death, died in 1242, leaving a son, Robert de Vipont, who joined the party of Simon de Montfort (Wykes), and died in 1265, being apparently slain in the battle of Evesham, leaving two daughters coheiresses: Isabella, who married Roger de Clifford [see under Clifford, Robert de], and Idonea, who married Roger, son of Roger de Leybourne [q. v.]
[Stapleton's Rot. Normann. Scacc., Observations, i. (R. Soc. Antiqq.); Dugdale's Baronage; Foss's Judges; Rot. Litt. Pat., Rot. Litt. Claus., Rot. de Oblatis, Rot. Normann., Rot. de Liberate (these five ed. Hardy), Excerpt. e rot. finium, ed. Roberts, Thirty-first Rep. of Dep.-Keeper of Records (these seven Rocord Publ.); Rog. Wend. (Engl. Hist. Soc.); R. Coggeshall, Matt. Paris's Chronica Majora, Royal Letters, Hen. III (all three Rolls Ser.).]
VIGANI, JOHN FRANCIS (1650?–1712), the first professor of chemistry in the university of Cambridge, was born at Verona about the middle of the seventeenth century. He travelled in Spain, France, and Holland, and studied mining, metallurgy, and pharmacy in the countries he visited. It does not appear that he attended any regular course of instruction, or took the degree of doctor of medicine, or had any recognised qualification. In 1682 he published a small treatise, entitled ‘Medulla Chymiæ.’ It was dedicated to a Dutchman, Joannes de Waal, and was printed and published at Danzig. During this year he probably arrived in England, first settling in Newark-on-Trent. About 1683 he took up his residence at Cambridge, and began to give private tuition in chemistry and pharmacy; for apparently he had at first no connection with any college. In 1692 he was invited to write a treatise on chemistry. He carried the preparation of it some length, but, unfortunately, it was never completed. By this time he had become an acknowledged teacher of the subject in Cambridge, and, though still independent of university support, had acquired considerable reputation.
His long-continued labours and success as a teacher were finally recognised by the university, for in 1703 a grace passed the senate for ‘investing with the title of professor of chemistry John Francis Vigani, a native of Verona, who had taught chemistry with reputation in Cambridge for twenty years previously.’ In 1705 he was lecturing on pharmaceutical chemistry at Queens' College, and, if one can rely upon the controversial pamphlets which were called into existence by Dr. Bentley's action as master of Trinity, it is likely that Vigani, as newly created professor, gave instruction in the laboratory which had been constructed in
