Portrait; Samuel Pegge (1704-1796)

Elias Needham

Engraving of the Reverend Samuel Pegge (1704-1796). (Samuel Pegge was educated at Chesterfield and in 1722 became a scholar of St John's College, Cambridge. He was ordained a priest in the Church of England in February 1730. In Kent Pegge developed his antiquarian interests, collecting books and coins, corresponding with like-minded contemporaries, researching, and writing. On 14 February 1751 Pegge was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. To the classical and theological compositions of his youth, beginning in 1727 with the publication of a Latin ode on the death of King George I, he had added a body of predominantly antiquarian writings which increased substantially during his remaining forty-five years. Pegge was said to have been the most prolific of all contributors to the journal Archaeologia with more than fifty published articles and memoirs.)