Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

MATTHEW GOUGH 1390-1450 By Major YNYR PROBERT THOUGH Matthew Gough is well-known to students of the Hundred Years' War, I have not been able to find any monograph on that colourful and valiant warrior. He came from Maelor in north-east Wales but appears to have settled his family at Hewelsfield near St. Briavels (Glos.). His mother was a Hanmer and his father, Owen Gough, was bailiff to the manor of Hanmer near Whitchurch. John, Lord Talbot, afterwards so famous in the latter part of the Hundred Years' War, was reared in this household. My interest in him was aroused by finding some time ago, amongst my father's papers, a correspondence with Sir Joseph Bradney on the subject of Matthew Gough's descendants. He seems to have spent most of his life in France during the turbulent times of the Hundred Years' War. The family lived at Hewelsfield until the middle of the eighteenth century, intermarrying with Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire families. In the middle of the sixteenth century George Gough married one of the co-heirs of William Warren of Willsbury whose effigy can be seen in the Church of St. Briavels. The Gough of the Armada time appears in the subscription lists as having given £ 25 — a large sum in those days, perhaps equivalent to £ 500 now. In an Inquisition post mortem of Charles I's time there is a long description of the property held by the Goughs, mostly in Gloucestershire. Richard Gough, the antiquary, also claimed descent from him. Again, according to B.M. Harl. MS.1541, Matthew had a daughter Elizabeth described there as heir, who married John Hubert, merchant of the Staple, from whom descended the Harlackenden family of Earls Colne, Essex. Another descendant of this marriage was Francis Hubert, the Elizabethan poet and biographer of Edward II. It was with reference to this MSS. that the correspondence with Sir Joseph Bradney had started. Matthew appears in the seventeenth century pedigree quoted by Sir Joseph Bradney (now in Cardiff Public Library) as Sir Matthew, and indeed Holinshed also styles him thus occasionally, but this was fairly common usage in those days for personages of note and he does not, in fact, ever appear to have been knighted. Sir John Fastolf in his will dated 1459 leaves money for masses for the soul of Matthew Gough Squier.2 To the French he was known as "Matago", the nearest they could get to the English pronunciation. 1 For a general account see Howell T. Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses (1915), 48-63, and the same author in D.W.B. J. Gairdner (ed.), The Paston Letters, I (1900), 456.