Robert Freke Gould
He entered the English army at the age of eighteen, becoming a lieutenant in the same year, and serving with distinction in North China in 1869.
On his return to England he studied law and became a barrister in 1868.
He was initiated at Ramsgate in the Royal Navy Lodge, No. 429, and was Master of the Inhabitants Lodge at Gibraltar, also of the Meridian Lodge, No. 743, a Military Lodge attached to his regiment.
Afterward he held the Chair of the Moira, Quatuor Coronati and Jerusalem Lodges.
In 1880 he was appointed Senior Grand Deacon of England. He had been a constant writer in the Masonic press since 1858; in 1879 he published The Four Old Lodges and The Atholl Lodges, and in 1899 a book on Military Lodges.
But his greatest work is the History of Freemasonry in three large volumes, which occupied him from 1882 to 1887, which was followed in 1903 by A Concise History of Freemasonry abridged from the larger work and brought up to date.
- Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry