Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Richard Gough
GOUGH, Richard (1735-1809), an English antiquary, was the son of a wealthy East India director, and was born in London, October 1, 1735. He received his early educa tion privately, and his literary talents developed with such precocity that, at the age of twelve and a half years, he had completed the translation of a history of the Bible from the French, which his mother printed for private circulation; at the age of fifteen he wrote a translation of Fleury s work on the customs of the Israelites; and at sixteen he had published an elaborate work entitled Atlas Re- novatus, or Geography modernized. In 1752 he entered Benet College, Cambridge, where his taste for antiquarian research received additional impulse, and where he com menced his work on British topography, which was pub lished in 1768. After leaving Cambridge in 1756, he began a series of antiquarian excursions in various parts of Great Britain, the fruit of which was seen in the volumes which he subsequently published. In 1773 he began to prepare an edition in English of Camden s Britannia, but the work did not appear till 1789. Meantime he published, in 1786, the first volume of his splendid work, the Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, applied to illustrate the history of families, manners, habits, and arts at the different periods from the Norman Conquest to the Seventeenth Century. This volume, which contained the first four centuries, was followed in 1796 by a second volume containing the 15th century, and an introduction to the second volume appeared in 1799. Gough was chosen a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1767, and from 1771 to 1791 he was its director. He was elected F.R.S. in 1775. He died at his residence at Enfield, 20th February 1809. His books and manuscripts relating to Anglo-Saxon and northern literature, all his collections in the department of British topography, and a large number of his drawings and engravings of other archaeological remains, were bequeathed to the university of Oxford.
Among the minor works of Gough are An Account of the Bedford Missal (in MS.); A Catalogue of the Court of Canute, King of Denmark, 1777; History of Fleshy in Essex, 1803; An Account of the Coins of the Seleucidae, Kings of Syria, 1803; and History of the Society of Antiquaries of London, prefixed to their Archaeologia. He also published several new editions of antiquarian works by other authors.