Pococke, Richard
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
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- Pococke, Richard
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(1704 - 65), divine and traveller, s. of Richard Pococke LLB of Southampton; Corpus Oxf. 1720; precentor, Lismore, 1725; pub. A Description of the East [1743 - 5]; Archdeacon of Dublin 1745; Bp. of Ossory 1756, of Elphin 1765 and Meath 1765.
1733 - 4 Genoa, Leghorn (3 Dec. 1733), Pisa, Florence (31 Dec. 1733 - 15 Jan. 1734), Siena, Bolsena, Viterbo, Rome (22 Jan. - 11 May), Ravenna, Bologna (20 - 26 May), Modena (26 May), Venice (2 - 10 Jun.), Padua, Vicenza (15 Jun.), Turin (by 26 Jun.) [Dover 11 Jul.]
1737 [dep. Dover 23 May 1736] Venice (10 - 21 Aug. 1737), Leghorn (6 Sep.) [Middle East]
1740 - 1 Messina (Nov. 1740), Naples (Dec. 1740 - 13 Jan. 1741), Rome (Jan. - 19 Feb. - ) [Chamonix Jun.]
Richard Pococke became well known as a relentless traveller, and particularly for his expeditions to the Middle East and his explorations of the Alps. He came first to Italy for a six-month tour in December 1733, accompanied by his younger cousin Jeremiah Milles (the future antiquary),1 and he described this journey in a series of letters to his mother (Pococke letters MSS). Three letters from Milles to his uncle, the Bishop of Waterford, (Milles letters MSS; from Bologna, 24 May; Modena, 26 May, and Venice 10 Jun. 1734) furnish further details of their itinerary. Pococke's letters particularly stressed the social standing of the British travellers he encountered, but he found space to describe an apothecary's shop in Florence where he bought 'some Essences & lip salves of Jessamine'. In Rome, where he found 'forty English' he visited the English Coffee House 'for an hour after 'tis dark, where most of our nation meet' (4 Feb. 1734). He described the Roman Carnival (1 Apr.), and was then very moved by the Good Friday offices at the Vatican ('how strange so ever it seems on first hearing of it'); he bought a summer suit of silk ('in this country any one is almost pointed at that wears cloth in summer'), and met the antiquary Martin Folkes with his family and the painter [James?] Wills (11 May 1734). On their return north, he described the Ascension festivities at Venice, 'a very dear place', where he stayed at 'Kennets a very good English publick house' (13 Jun. 1734), and dined with the British resident Burges, 'a most facetious merry old Gentleman' (23 Jun. 1734). They left Venice in a Bucello 'a large covered boat with a handsom room in it' for Fusina, thence to Vicenza. Pococke's last Italian letter was from Turin on 26 June,2 and they were at Dover on 11 July.
On his second tour he left Dover on 23 May 1736 and, having spent time in Germany and Eastern Europe, he had arrived in Venice, from Trieste, by 21 August 1737 (the last letter from Italy in the Pococke letters MSS). He twice mentioned his friendship in Italy with a Mr Wood, probably Robert Wood, the archaeologist, who was in Padua by the summer of 1738. On 6 September he sailed from Leghorn for the East, telling his mother that 'in two days [I] shall be in the Turkish habit, a turban and all'.3 By September he was in Alexandria and he went on to visit Cairo and Jerusalem during a tour lasting over three years.
Returning from his great expedition he landed at Messina in November 1740. In Naples, where he twice ascended Vesuvius, he lodged with George Stuart and George Belsches at the Three Kings hotel. On 13 January Pococke left for Rome, where he again encountered Stuart and Belsches on 8 and 19 February. By June Pococke was in Chamonix, where his curiosity (and subsequent publications) largely initiated the vogue for Alpine travel.
Pococke assembled an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman coins which was sold after his death in 1766 (Langford's, 27 - 8 May).
1. SP 98/34 (Leghorn Newsletter, 3 Dec. 1733). 2. See J. Black, Studi Piemontesi, 14ii[1985]:411 - 14. 3. Notes by M. McCarthy from Add.22998, ff.108 - 114. M. McCarthy, Apollo, 143[1996]:25 - 9.