Richard Godolphin Long

Richard Godolphin Long (2 October 1761 – 1 July 1835) was an English banker and Tory politician.

Baptised at West Lavington, Wiltshire a month after his birth, he was the son of Richard Long and his wife Meliora, descendant of Sir John Lambe. Long was a partner in the Melksham Bank, together with his younger brother John Long, John Awdry and Thomas Bruges. In 1799, he purchased Steeple Ashton Manor House and farm, which remained in the family until 1967, and commissioned architect Jeffry Wyattville to build Rood Ashton House in 1808.

In 1794, he was appointed High Sheriff of Wiltshire. Long entered the British House of Commons in 1806, sitting for Wiltshire until 1818. He was the founder of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry.

On 27 March 1786, he married Florentina Wrey, third daughter of Sir Bourchier Wrey, 6th Baronet, and had by her four daughters and two sons. After a lingering illness Long died aged 73, at Rood Ashton House in his favourite chair, just six weeks after his wife, and was buried in the family's crypt at St John's Church, Steeple Ashton. His older son Walter was himself a member of parliament, representing North Wiltshire. His second daughter Florentina (Flora), having been previously engaged to Henry Cobbe (uncle of Frances Power Cobbe), who had died the day before the proposed marriage, formed a strong attachment to the then elderly poet George Crabbe. Flora and her aunts were frequent visitors of novelist Jane Austen, who referred to Flora as her 'cousin', though their exact relationship is not known. Austen never met Crabbe, but nursed a fantasy of becoming his wife.

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