GOUGH, Robert (1611-1700), of Merriott, Som. and Vernhams Dean, Hants.

The Goughs appear to have resided in Wiltshire until the early seventeenth century, migrating to Merriott, two miles north of Crewkerne in Somerset, when Gough’s grandfather Robert Gough ‘of Chard’ (d. 1625), also the owner of property in Devon, acquired parcels of the manor in 1605-8.16VCH Som. iv. 54; Som. RO, DD/SB/38/3; PROB11/148/185. While they were not prominent among the gentry elite, Gough’s father’s marriage into the Gibbes family brought him extensive connections among the lawyers and attorneys of the region. At his death in 1635 John Gough was able to build on the bequests of relatives to make up the portions of his four younger sons and four younger daughters to a total of about £4,000. His eldest son, Robert, already the beneficiary of land from his grandfather, was to receive an annuity of £100, vested in trustees including his uncles George Gibbes and William Lawrence (father of William Lawrence*), to enable him to complete his education at the Inner Temple.17PROB11/168/321.

Robert Gough married in 1636 in London, although it is conceivable that his bride belonged to the Goddard family of Wiltshire and Hampshire; perhaps she was a kinswoman of Inner Temple bencher Richard Goddard† (d.1666).18St Benet, Paul’s Wharf, par. reg.; Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 167-8. Called to the bar in January 1640, by October 1641 Gough was living at Vernhams Dean in the extreme north west of Hampshire, perhaps having leased an estate from Winchester College.19E115/175/123. It appears to have remained his home for the remainder of the decade for that was the address given for him in August 1649 when he was named as executor in the will of his brother William Gough, a merchant with the Levant Company in Constantinople, who left 500 dollars or pieces of eight to each of his six surviving siblings.20VCH Hants. iv. 330; PROB11/211/674.

Gough emerged from obscurity in March 1647 to be named to the commissions of the peace for both Somerset and Hampshire, and subsequently also to the assessment commission for Somerset.21C231/6, p. 76. However, in February 1652 he was removed from the Hampshire bench, and probably from other administrative positions.22C231/6, p. 229. This may indicate opposition to the Rump or to the growing influence of the army, but it may also be related a petition submitted to the Somerset quarter sessions in July 1650, which alleged that one Robert Gough of Merriott – probably, if not certainly, the future MP – was guilty of ‘great disorders and abuses committed on the Lord’s day and other days’.23QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 127.

If this was indeed Gough, the complaint must eventually have been dismissed, since he was named as a commissioner for scandalous ministers in 1654, and was restored to the bench in July 1656.24C231/6, p. 340. In 1659 he was elected to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament alongside Gabriel Becke* as one of the Members for Andover, a few miles south of Vernhams Dean.25Hants RO, 37M85/11/PE/2. It seems likely that he was returned on his own interest, although his large extended family in the area may also have been helpful; he may have been regarded as a candidate whose presence in the House would serve to exclude more radical alternatives. The only evidence of his attendance at Westminster was an order granting him permission to return to the country (9 Apr. 1659).26CJ vii. 632b. He might have been the Robert Gough who was named as a lieutenant in the regiment of Edmund Ludlowe II* at the end of May, although the lack of indications of any prior military service or other strong commitment to the cause render this unlikely.27CJ vii. 668b.

Uncompromised by excessive zeal, Gough weathered the Restoration. He continued to be named as an assessment commissioner, but was not again placed on the commission of the peace, perhaps simply because there were plenty of more socially elevated candidates.28SR. However, probably as a result of a flourishing legal practice, Gough was sufficiently wealthy in 1671 to marry his daughter Elizabeth to Samuel, son of Bulstrode Whitelocke*, providing her with a substantial marriage portion (£3,000). Although the negotiations between Gough and Whitelocke were not without difficulties, they may subsequently have become fairly close friends.29Mar. Lics. ed. Chester and Armytage (Harl. Soc. xxiii), 197; Whitelocke, Diary, 784, 786-7, 788-92, 795, 798-9, 806, 810, 819, 831, 835. Gough had moved the short distance to Chilton on the border of Wiltshire and Berkshire when he died in April 1700, but he was buried at Vernhams Dean.30Vernhams Dean par. reg. His two sons had predeceased him, so he had settled his estates on his grandson Samuel Whitelocke and named his daughter Elizabeth Whitelocke as his executrix and residuary legatee. He also provided for numerous grandchildren from his three surviving daughters and remembered Edward Nicholas ‘only child of Dr John Nicholas’, canon of Winchester and warden of the college, ‘my always kind and most obliging landlord’.31PROB11/455/248. None of his six grandsons sat in Parliament.