Robert Freke Gould

Robert Freke Gould (10 November 1836 – 26 March 1915) was a soldier, barrister and prominent Freemason and Masonic historian.

Robert Freke Gould, Rector of Stoke Pero in Somerset and a brother of the Countess of Strafford.

The younger brother of Thomas Wentworth Gould, Robert Freke Gould was born in Ilfracombe in Devon[1] and joined the British Army aged 18 in 1855 as an Ensign in the 86th (Royal County Down) Regiment of Foot, then as a lieutenant in the 31st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot.

Due to the absence of the first Master Sir Charles Warren on a diplomatic mission in Southern Africa, the lodge was not formally inaugurated until two years later.

As such, their approach was new and unusual, and they intended that the results should "replace the imaginative writings of earlier authors on the history of Freemasonry."