Having been elected to a scholarship from Westminster at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1792, aged 19, he matriculated on 6 June in that year, and proceeded B.A.
In November 1793 he became a member, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Valentine Le Grice, and Christopher Wordsworth, of a small literary society at Cambridge; and he seems to have been involved in the short-lived University Magazine of 1795.
[1][2] While at Trinity, Rough made the acquaintance, as a fellow-sympathiser with William Frend, of John Singleton Copley.
In April 1816 he accepted Earl Bathurst's offer of the post of president of the court of justice for the united colony of Demerara and Essequibo.
He remained there for five years, but on 6 October 1821, after a long disagreement, he was suspended by the acting governor, Lieutenant-general John Murray, for having, as supreme judge, usurped "the privileges and functions of the executive".
Henry Crabb Robinson met them socially in 1810; their circle included Frances Abington, Edmund Kean, Copley and many other lawyers.