Heigham’s ancestors were freeholders on the west Suffolk manor from which they took their name and which they acquired in the mid-fourteenth century. However, Heigham’s father, Clement, a lawyer from a cadet branch, was the first of the family to enter Parliament. Chief bailiff of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds and a staunch Catholic, Clement purchased part of the estate of his former employers after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1539 he also bought the manor of Barrow, near Heigham, where he built his home. Elected first for Rye in 1553, he sat for Ipswich in 1554, when he served as Speaker, and was subsequently appointed a privy councillor and baron of the Exchequer by Mary, before losing office and retiring to Suffolk at the accession of Elizabeth.
By contrast with his father, Heigham was a puritan, losing his place on the bench in 1583 after clashing with the bishop of Norwich. With his lifelong friend Sir Robert Jermyn† he exercised severe moral discipline over Bury St. Edmunds, although he had close connections with conforming Calvinist ministers such as Andrew Willet and William Bedell.
Elected knight of the shire for the second time in 1604, having not sat in Parliament for 17 years, Heigham was named to 135 committees and made 20 recorded speeches in the first Jacobean Parliament. In the opening session he was among the Members named on 23 Mar. to consider the grievances presented by Sir Edward Montagu, which included the ‘burden’ of the ecclesiastical courts and suspension of nonconformist ministers. On 16 Apr. he was appointed to the committee for religion established on the motion of his fellow puritan, Sir Francis Hastings. When articles for a proposed conference with the Lords were reported from the committee on 5 May, Heigham argued that clergymen should be required to subscribe only to those Canons confirmed by statute.
Heigham was named to consider several bills concerning religion and the clergy, including measures to declare ministers’ marriages lawful (11 May), to reform ecclesiastical justice (16 June), and ‘for avoiding unjust suits’ against clergymen (19 June).
Heigham was appointed to attend the conference with the Lords about the Union with Scotland on 14 Apr., and he also spoke in the debate over the name to be given to the new, united kingdom four days later. Quoting scripture, he seems to have regarded James’ accession as the divinely ordained consummation of Tudor policy, stating that in the Elizabethan period ‘this Union [was] affected many ways’ and asking, ‘if the queen in her time, had commanded it, should we have refused it?’
Heigham was twice named to delegations to attend the king regarding the Buckinghamshire election dispute (28 Mar. and 12 April).
Heigham’s interest in the legislative business of the House extended beyond measures concerning religion. On 20 Apr. he spoke in favour of the bill for better execution of justice (formerly entitled the extortions bill) at its third reading.
Heigham reported two further public bills: the subsequently enacted measure to combat outbreaks of the plague on 14 June, and a bill concerning the drainage of the Fens 16 days later, which was ordered to sleep until the next session.
The second of the private bills concerning Norfolk men reported by Heigham was the bill to allow the sale of lands by Henry Jernegan the younger of Costessy. On 7 June Heigham was named to the committee, from which he reported four days later.
Heigham was almost certainly in Westminster when the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, as he was appointed to the privileges committee on 5 Nov. 1605.
On 22 Jan. Heigham was appointed to the committee to consider ‘the general planting of a learned ministry’ and the problem posed by non-resident clergy. He was subsequently named to consider bills concerning pluralism and non-residence (5 Mar.) and those ministers deprived for failing to subscribe to the 1604 Canons (7 March). This last issue was evidently of particular concern to him, as he was one of the Members who ‘much urged’ the restoring of deprived ministers when their ejection was reported as one of the grievances by Nicholas Fuller on 15 March.
On 7 Feb. Heigham was among those instructed to consider the explanatory bill concerning the provision in the Elizabethan statute of artificers concerning apprenticeships. He reported it on 22 Feb., when it was ‘thought fit to sleep’.
Heigham had been a Member of the 1586/7 Parliament, and when the Speaker cited a precedent from 1587 in a privilege case on 13 Feb., Heigham was able to show that the circumstances now were different.
Heigham was again appointed to the privileges committee at the start of the third session (19 Nov. 1606). On 9 Dec. the clerk made a note to inquire of Heigham how long the 1586 Parliament had lasted, although the reason for this question is not stated. Heigham was granted privilege for staying a trial at the Suffolk assizes on 5 Mar. 1607 and, 18 days later, during the Speaker’s illness, he moved successfully for a junior postal official imprisoned by order of the Commons for requisitioning a horse from Thomas James* to be released.
Heigham was among those instructed to attend the conference with the Lords of 25 Nov. on the Union. On 3 Mar., and again on the 30th, he reminded the Commons that the Lords were awaiting a reply to their request for a conference on naturalization. He offered to speak on the subject of the abolition of the hostile laws between the two kingdoms on 4 June, but further debate was deferred.
Heigham was again appointed to a series of committees relating to religion, including those for bills to prevent the enforcement of those Canons not confirmed by statute (11 Dec.); against pluralism and non-residence (4 Mar.); and for the endowment of under-resourced parishes (15 May).
On 28 Apr. Heigham was named to consider the Holditch estate bill. This measure, promoted by John Holditch, sought to confirm a judgment in Common Pleas. The court had found that one of Holditch’s predecessors had made an error in conveying property in Suffolk to his tenants, as a result of which Holditch hoped to force the former tenants to pay him £1,000 between them. Heigham persuaded the House to give the ex-tenants notice of the committee meeting, and on 9 June, possibly in expectation that the bill would not have time to pass in the remainder of the session, the Speaker appointed five local knights, including Heigham and Sir Henry Glemham*, to arbitrate between the parties and reach a composition ‘out of the equity of the cause and the poverty of the petitioner’. However, the issue was still unresolved when Parliament reconvened in 1610.
Heigham took a much less prominent part in the next session. He made no recorded speeches, and was named to only six committees. He was named to attend the conference of 15 Feb. 1610, at which the 1st earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†) outlined the parlous state of the royal finances and demanded supply, and on the following day he was appointed to the committee for the bill for the construction of gaols. The flow of private bills from Norfolk continued, and he was named to the committees for the bill to confirm the purchase of the manor of Lowestoft by Sir John Heveningham*, the son of Heigham’s ‘intimate friend’, Sir Arthur, (20 Feb.) and for the bill to enable the lands of Richard Beckham of Narford to be sold (21 February). His last committee appointments were made on 26 Feb., and concerned purveyance and clerical pluralism.
It seems to have been ill health that ensured that Heigham left no subsequent trace on the records of the first Jacobean Parliament. Writing to lord chancellor Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton†) from his Westminster lodgings on 22 Mar., he stated that he had been ‘unable to travel out of my chamber’ because of ‘a looseness which hath this five weeks possessed me; ... violently both night and day’. He informed Ellesmere that the Commons had given him licence to depart, although there is no record of this in the Journal, and that he was intending to return home, presumably to convalesce. He evidently made a full recovery as he survived another 16 years and remained active in county administration till within a few months of his death.
There is no evidence that Heigham sought re-election in 1614; but he remained keenly interested in parliamentary matters, particularly as negotiations for the Spanish Match gathered pace. In late 1617 Andrew Willet, the Church of England controversialist, wrote to Heigham, enclosing a manuscript tract advocating a generous grant by Parliament, which he evidently hoped would soon be summoned, arguing that James would not need the dowry from Spain if the Commons supplied him with money. Heigham circulated copies of Willet’s letter and the tract to other members of the Suffolk bench ‘to know the disposition of the principal gentlemen ..., that so they who are likeliest to be chosen Members of the Parliament may be summoned, and so foreign attempts dissolved’. However, the correspondence was forwarded to the king, and the only upshot was a period of imprisonment for Willet.
As an octogenarian, Heigham, with his Essex colleague Sir John Deane*, kept a watchful eye on the problems of the heavily industrialized Stour valley. In 1622 they warned the government of the danger to public order consequent on the collapse of the market for the new draperies and widespread unemployment among the clothiers.