author
Samuel Pegge
1704–1796
An eighteenth-century clergyman with a detective’s eye for old customs, coins, language, and local history, he helped preserve the small details that make the past feel alive. His writings range widely, but they share a clear curiosity about how people in earlier times lived and spoke.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Samuel Pegge, known as "the Elder," was an English clergyman and antiquary born in Chesterfield in 1704 and dead in 1796. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge, was ordained in the Church of England, and went on to hold a series of church posts while building a strong reputation as a scholar of the past.
He is best remembered for his work as an antiquary: a patient researcher interested in old records, customs, medieval life, Anglo-Saxon studies, heraldry, coins, and the history of Derbyshire. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and his books and essays show the wide-ranging curiosity that made eighteenth-century antiquarian writing so valuable to later historians.
For modern readers, his appeal lies in that breadth. He did not write only about kings and battles; he also cared about words, rituals, everyday practices, and the odd corners of history that others might overlook. That makes him an engaging guide to the textures of the English past.