[1] He won the Chancellor's Gold Medal in July 1818 for English verse on the subject of imperial and papal Rome,[2] and graduated BA in 1819 and MA in 1822.
Returning from a visit to Hamburg, Long died unmarried on 25 September 1861 at the Lord Warden Hotel, Dover.
Possessed of an ample fortune, Long's devotion to historical and genealogical studies were greatly facilitated by access to the College of Heralds granted him by the Deputy Earl Marshal, Lord Henry Thomas Molyneux Howard - his uncle by marriage.
In 1845 with the assistance of the Garter King of Arms, Sir Charles George Young, Long compiled a volume called Royal descents: a genealogical list of the several persons entitled to quarter the arms of the royal houses of England In 1859 from the original manuscript in the British Museum, he edited for the Camden Society, the Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War, Kept by Richard Symonds.
During 1857–9 he also gave to the museum many valuable documents relating to Jamaica, also preserved in the British Library are his letters to Joseph Hunter, extending from 1847 to 1859.