Life
1704-1765 [var. Pocock]; ed. Oxon; DCL, 1733; Archdeacon of Dublin; travelled widely; visited Egypt, 1737-38, ascending Nile to Philae; proceeded to Palestine, Cyprus, Asia Minor, and Greece; 1738-40; explored Mer de Glace in valley of Chamounix, 1741; pioneer of Alpine travel; account of eastern travels (1743-1745); bishop of Ossory, 1756-65; translated as bishop of Meath, 1765; his MS accounts of tours in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1747 and 1760, published 1888-91; Irish Tours, circuiting Ireland in 1752, rep. 1995. ODNB.
Works
George T. Stokes, ed., intro. & annot., Pococke's Tour in Ireland in 1752 (1891); Richard Pococke’s Irish Tours, ed. John McVeagh (IAP 1995) [prev. unpublished journals of explorations of Irish coast in 1740s and 50s]. Also, R. Pococke, Sermon Preached … on the 27th of June 1762 (Dublin 1762).
Commentary
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this ed. 1984), Richard Pococke, b. 1704, ed. England, precentor of Lismore Cathedral in 1725, d. as Bishop of Meath in 1765; voyaged in Levant 1738-40; thorough survey of the coast of the Troad on horseback in 1740, making a good guess at the location of Troy (Hissarlik); Description of the East and Some Other Countries I1743-45), praised by Gibbon in Decline and Fall for ‘superior learning and dignity’ though ‘the author often confounds what he has seen with what he has read’ (Chp. 51, n.69); translated into French, German, and Dutch; a collection of coins and two Hellenistic rliefs in TCD; volume of Greek and Latin inscriptions, with Jeremiah Miller (1752). See Pococke, ODNB.
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Vol. I (1819), notes that Pocock knew Mervyn Archdall, the author of Monasticon Hibernicum and gave him a church living at Attanah in which to compile this antiquarian work; that he used to visit Attanah from his episcopal see in Kilkenny (Ossory) for periods of rest, and the he was himself the auhor of ‘Tours through Ireland and Scotland, which Dr. Ledwich informs us are in the British Museum.’ (Ryan, op. cit., p.17.)
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