GOUGH CALTHORPE (formerly GOUGH), Sir Henry, 2nd Bt. (1749-98), of Edgbaston, Warws.

Gough Calthorpe controlled a seat at Hindon as well as that which he himself occupied. Previously independent, he appears to have supported Pitt consistently from the time of the Regency crisis. He was listed hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in Scotland in 1791. On 8 Mar. 1793 he was excused attending a call of the House, having ‘met with an accident, which rendered him incapable of attending his duty’.1CJ, xlviii. 365. He had recovered by 9 May, when he spoke in favour of the Hemlington Hundred bill, an outcome of the Birmingham riots. He voted against abolition of the slave trade, 15 Mar. 1796. At the dissolution he received the peerage for which he had applied in 1789.2PRO 30/8/119, f. 130 (‘by my grandmother on my mother’s side’, he wrote, ‘I claim relationship to the greatest part of the most ancient nobility of this kingdom’). He subscribed £6,000 to the loyalty loan for 1797. His obituary refers to his ‘exactness and discernment’.3Gent. Mag. (1798), i. 264. He died ‘of a violent fever’, 16 Mar. 1798.