 It is likely that his father was Roger's brother Humphrey.Other students at Laon included William de Corbeil, later Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert de Bethune, who became Bishop of Hereford, Geoffrey le Breton, future Archbishop of Rouen, and other men subsequently to hold bishoprics in the Anglo-Norman dominions.When he took vows as a cleric is unrecorded, but Nigel held a prebend, an ecclesiastical office in the cathedral, in the see of London before holding one of the offices of archdeacon in the diocese of Salisbury, although which archdeaconry he held is unclear.