Sir John Honywood. By her, who died on 11 Dec. 1783, aged 75, he had six children, of whom John (1749–1813) [q. v.] became bishop of London.
According to Richard Lovell Edgeworth [q. v.], Randolph was a singularly gentle and indulgent president of his college. His ‘good humour made more salutary impression on the young men he governed than has been ever effected by the morose manners of any unrelenting disciplinarian’ (Edgeworth, Memoirs, 1820). During Randolph's administration, too, the college seems to have shaken off the lethargy which had marked it, in common with the other Oxford colleges, during the early half of the century. The undergraduates included many men—Lord Stowell, Bishop Burgess, Archbishop Lawrence, and others—who subsequently attained eminence.
Randolph was a stout champion of orthodoxy as at that time understood. He engaged in the Trinitarian, Arian, and subscription controversies, and entered the lists against no less than five well-known authors—Gibbon, Bishop Law of Carlisle, Bishop Clayton of Clogher, Theophilus Lindsey, and the younger Dodwell. In addition to the work directed against the last-named author, which has been already noticed, and single sermons, Randolph defended the subscription of undergraduates to the Thirty-nine Articles in pamphlets published at Oxford between 1771 and 1774, in reply, among others, to Edmund Law [q. v.], bishop of Carlisle. His other works include:
- ‘A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the Exceptions of a late Pamphlet [by Robert Clayton [q. v.], bishop of Clogher] entituled “An Essay on Spirit,”’ &c., published at Oxford in 1754.
- ‘A Vindication of the Worship of the Son of God and the Holy Ghost against the Exceptions of Mr. Theophilus Lindsey, Oxford,’ 1775.
- ‘A Letter to the Remarker on the Layman's Scriptural Confutation, wherein the Divinity of the Son of God is further vindicated,’ Oxford, 1777.
- ‘The Proof of the Christian Religion drawn from its Successful and Speedy Propagation,’ &c., in two sermons, Oxford, 1777 (directed against Gibbon's fifteenth chapter on the ‘Progress of the Christian Religion’).
- ‘The Prophecies and other Texts cited in the New Testament compared with the Hebrew Original and the Septuagint Version,’ &c., Oxford, 1782.
- A posthumous publication, in two volumes, entitled ‘A View of Our Blessed Saviour's Ministry, together with a Charge, Dissertations, Sermons, and Theological Lectures (Prælectiones Theologicæ, xvii.),’ Oxford, 1784; the charge and sermons in these volumes had alone been already published.
Prefixed to the two volumes of the posthumous works is a portrait of Randolph (as an old man), painted or drawn by J. Taylor, and engraved by John Keyse Sherwen. A few copies seem to have been struck off separately.
[Fowler's History of Corpus Christi College; Biographical Preface to the two posthumous volumes; Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth; Corpus Christi Coll. Reg.; Berry's County Genealogies (Kent), pp. 278–9; Hasted's Kent, i.]
RANDOLPH, WILLIAM (1650–1711), colonist, son of Richard Randolph, who was half-brother of the poet, Thomas Randolph [q. v.], was born in 1650 at Morton Morrell in Warwickshire. In 1674 he emigrated to Virginia, acquired a large plantation on the James river, and devoted himself to planting with much success, for he left seven or more estates at his death. He lived latterly at Turkey Island, below Richmond, Virginia, where he had built himself a splendid mansion. He was also a shipowner, and his ships plied regularly to Bristol.
Randolph rose to the rank of colonel in the colonial militia. He was member of the house of assembly in 1684, and later a member of council. He is said to have been a man of high character, with wide influence. He was a founder and trustee of the William and Mary College, Virginia; but his chief work was directed to the civilisation of the Indians. He died on 11 April 1711 at Turkey Island.
He married Mary Isham, and had seven sons and three daughters. Six of the sons became prominent colonists; one of them, Sir John Randolph of Tazewell Hall, was knighted in 1730 when on a visit to England.
[Virginian Historical Collections; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biogr.]
RANDS, HENRY (d. 1551), bishop of Lincoln. [See Holbeach, Henry.]
RANDS, WILLIAM BRIGHTY (1823–1882), ‘the laureate of the nursery,’ writing under the pseudonyms of Henry Holbeach and Matthew Browne, son of a small shopkeeper, was born in Keppel Street, Chelsea, on 24 Dec. 1823. He received a very limited education, and derived much of what he knew from a habit of reading at the second-hand bookstalls. He had a varied career, was for some years in a warehouse, then on the stage, and then a clerk in an attorney's office. Having taught himself stenography, he in May 1857 entered the employment of Messrs. Gurney & Co., and was soon appointed a reporter in the committee-rooms
