years previous to his death Reddish had an annuity from the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund. He lingered out the remainder of his life as a lunatic, dying in the York asylum on 31 Dec. 1785.
Reddish, though for some time a prominent figure, filling the place of Charles Holland (1733–1769) [q. v.], never rose above a second-rate position. His form was stiff and heavy, his face was rigid, and he had a monotonous voice. He was very violent in his acting, and as Castalio stabbed William Smith (d. 1819) [q. v.], who impersonated Polydore. Dibdin pronounces him a performer of considerable merit.
A portrait as Posthumus was painted by Robert Edge Pine [q. v.] and engraved by V. Green, and published on 19 Nov. 1771. This is possibly the picture for which his biographer says rebukefully that he paid sixty-five guineas. Another portrait by Parkinson, as Posthumus to the Iachimo of Palmer, is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club.
About 1767 Reddish married a Miss Hart, the daughter of a tradesman in St. James's, who made a brief appearance on the stage, and was mentioned by Churchill among stage beauties:
Happy in this, behold among the throng,
With transient gleam of grace Hart sweeps along.
No record of her performances before her marriage can be traced in Genest, and she appears to have grown very stout and not to have lived long. What specially commended her to Reddish is said to have been an income of 200l. a year, settled upon her by a previous admirer. The name of Mrs. Reddish appears to the Countess of Nottingham in the ‘Earl of Essex’ on 28 Dec. 1767, and to Lady Macduff on 14 Jan. 1768. As a second wife Reddish married Mrs. Canning, the mother of George Canning. Some doubt has been cast on the marriage, but Robert Bell, in his ‘Life of Canning,’ says that it rests on an authority which properly closes all discussion on the subject.
[Theatrical Biography, 1772; Genest's Account of the English Stage; Dibdin's History of the Stage; Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe; Hitchcock's Irish Stage; Smith's Catalogue; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Georgian Era. A Life of Reddish appears in Miller's London Mercury, No. x.]
REDE. [See also Read, Reade, Reed, Reede, and Reid.]
REDE, LEMAN THOMAS [TERTIUS] (1799–1832), miscellaneous writer, was born in 1799. The father, Leman Thomas Rede, student of the Inner Temple, friend of George Canning's father and a connection of Sir Astley Cooper, was the son of Thomas Rede of Roos Hall, Beccles, Suffolk, but was obliged, owing to the pressure of creditors, to leave England for Hamburg, and died there in December 1810, whereupon his widow, with five children, returned to England. He was a newspaper hack, but also published: 1. ‘Studies of Nature,’ translated from the French of Bernardin de St. Pierre, 1798. 2. ‘Anecdotes and Biography,’ 1799; two editions. 3. ‘Essay on the Laws of England,’ Hamburg, 1802, 3 vols.
The son, Leman Thomas [Tertius] Rede, was, like his father, bred to the law, but inherited the paternal propensity to improvidence, and took to the stage and teaching elocution. He and his brother William Leman Rede [q. v.] were known in London life as ‘the inseparables.’ They were both of them the possessors of great literary talent and varied conversational powers, and both of them were always in want of money. Leman performed ‘divers melodramatic characters in the provinces’ and in London, his last appearance on the stage taking place at Sadler's Wells Theatre a fortnight before his death. He died on 12 Dec. 1832, and was buried in Clerkenwell cemetery, his brother being buried in the same grave in 1847. In 1824 Rede married the widow of William Oxberry [q. v.], the comedian.
His works were: 1. ‘The Modern Speaker.’ 2. ‘Memoir of George Canning,’ 1827, a volume not without merit but very inadequate in research, as ‘two months only were allotted to him’ for its preparation. 3. ‘The Road to the Stage, or the Performer's Preceptor,’ 1827; a useful little manual on acting and the stage at that date. In conjunction with his brother he edited ‘Oxberry's Dramatic Biography,’ which sold well and ran to five volumes.
[Works of L. T. Rede, father and son; Gent. Mag. 1832, ii. 581; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. x. 408.]
REDE, Sir ROBERT (d. 1519), chief justice of the common pleas, was son of William and Joan Rede, as appears both from his will and from a deed founding a fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge. Foss is incorrect in stating that he was the third son of Edward Rede, who married Izod, daughter of Sir Humphrey Stanley. The family came originally from Morpeth, Northumberland. Rede's grandfather was a serjeant-at-law in the reign of Henry IV, and was settled at Norwich. Rede was educated at Buckingham College, Cambridge, which
