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GOUGH (afterwards GOUGH CALTHORPE), Sir Henry, 2nd Bt. (1749-98), of Edgbaston, Warws.
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Family and Education
b. 1 Jan. 1749, 1st s. of Sir Henry Gough, 1st Bt., M.P., by his 2nd w. Barbara, da. of Reynolds Calthorpe, M.P., of Elvetham, Hants. educ. Eton 1762-7; Oriel, Oxf. 1767. m. 1 May 1783, Frances, da. and coh. of Gen. Benjamin Carpenter, 6s. 2da. suc. fa. 8 June 1774; and to estates of his uncle Sir Henry Calthorpe, and took add. name of Calthorpe 1788; cr. Baron Calthorpe 16 June 1796.
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Biography
Gough inherited control of one seat at Bramber in 1774, and was returned unopposed at the general election.
His parliamentary attendance seems to have been irregular, and his voting independent. He voted with Opposition on Wilkes, 22 Feb. 1775; was marked as ‘contra, present, friend’ by Robinson on the contractors bill, 12 Feb. 1779; voted with Opposition on the abolition of the Board of Trade, 13 Mar. 1780, and on Dunning’s motion, 6 Apr. 1780, but with Administration on the motion against prorogation, 24 Apr. 1780. Robinson in his 1780 survey classed him as ‘pro’. During the last critical months of North’s Administration only one vote by Gough is recorded: with Opposition on Conway’s motion against the war, 22 Feb. 1782. He voted against Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 18 Feb. 1783, and for Fox’s East India bill, 27 Nov. 1783, but Robinson, in his survey of December 1783, wrote: ‘Sir Henry Gough is in inclination generally with Government’, and George III wrote to Pitt, 1 Jan. 1784: ‘I have good hopes of Sir Henry Gough.’1 Gough was a member of the St. Alban’s Tavern group which met in January 1784 to try and bring about a union of parties. Stockdale, 19 Mar. 1784, and Adam, May 1784, classed him as ‘Administration’. His only recorded votes in this Parliament were with Pitt over the Regency, 1788-9; and on 25 Mar. 1789 he wrote to Pitt soliciting a peerage.
Gough’s one recorded speech before 1790, was against a bill for licensing a theatre at Birmingham, 29 Apr. 1777: he thought ‘there was no necessity Birmingham should have any theatre at all; a strolling company might now and then come here, but the magistrate would judge if it was proper for them to perform or not’.2
He died 16 Mar. 1798.
