i. 263). In 1252 the king commanded him to exhort the people of London to take the cross. His preaching in this instance was attended with small success (Matt. Paris, v. 282; Fœdera, i. 288). But when St. Louis was compelled in 1253 to return to Europe, leaving eastern Christendom on the verge of dissolution, the pope had no more strenuous helper than Richard of Chichester in reviving the flagging enthusiasm in England. He preached a crusade (Matt. Paris, vi. 200, 201, 209) both in his own diocese and that of Canterbury (Bocking, p. 294). As he drew near to Dover, however, where he was to consecrate a church dedicated to St. Edmund, his strength failed. Reaching Dover, and lodging in the Hospitium Dei, he consecrated the church; but next morning (3 April 1253), during early mass in the chapel, he fell and soon after died (ib. p. 306; Matt. Paris, v. 369). His biographers (Bocking, p. 306; CAPGRAVE, p. 281) tell how the clergy who performed for him the last offices were deeply impressed on finding his body torn with macerations and clad in horsehair clasped with iron bands (cf. Matt. Paris, v. 380). Richard's remains, except the perishable parts, which were interred in the church of St. Edmund at Dover, were buried according to his wish in a humble grave in the nave of Chichester Cathedral, near the altar of St. Edmund, which he himself had constructed in memory of his revered master (Bocking, p. 307; Sussex Arch. Coll. i. 166). His will has been printed in Dallaway's ‘West Sussex’ (i. 47) and in ‘Testamenta Vetusta.’ It is printed with greater accuracy by Mr. W. H. Blaauw in ‘Sussex Archæological Collections’ (i. 164–192). Mr. Blaauw has appended a translation and notes. Richard left legacies to the church of Chichester, to many communities of Franciscan and Dominican friars, to various recluses, and to his servants and friends. The only bequest to his family was a marriage portion of twenty marks to the daughter of his sister. He was still crippled with debt, and ordered his executors to demand from the king the two years' profits from his bishopric which Henry had unjustly taken. Archbishop Boniface was his principal executor.
From the moment of his death Richard received the honours of sanctity. Stories of miracles wrought at his tomb soon obtained universal belief (Matt. Paris, v. 380, 384, 419, 496, 497; Ann. Worcester, p. 442). The veneration in which his memory was held grew rapidly. In the episcopate of Stephen Berksted (1262–1287) Edward, the king's son, visited the tomb. In July 1256 a commission of Walter of Cantelupe, bishop of Worcester, Adam Marsh, and the provincial prior of the Dominicans, was appointed by Alexander IV to examine his life and miracles (Bliss, Cal. Papal Letters, i. 332). On 28 Jan. 1262 at Viterbo, in the church of the Franciscans, Urban IV, in the presence of a great assembly, declared Richard of Chichester formally canonised (Bliss, Cal. Papal Letters, i. 376–377; Wilkins, Concilia, i. 743). Papal license for the translation of the saint's relics to Chichester Cathedral was given on 20 Feb. together with promised relaxations of penance to pilgrims (Bliss, i. 377). The barons' wars probably stopped immediate action. It was not until 16 June 1276 that St. Richard's remains were translated to a silver-gilt shrine in Edward I's presence by Archbishop Kilwardby, assisted by several bishops (Ann. Winchester, p. 122; Ann. Waverley, p. 387; Ann. Osney, p. 268; Ann. Worcester, pp. 470, 471). The tomb of St. Richard, as it exists at present, in the south transept, is of later date and has suffered from ‘restoration’ (Willis, Architect. Hist. of Chichester). Till the time of Henry VIII it was a favourite place of pilgrimage. His festival, kept on 3 April, was an important feast in Sussex until the Reformation, and his name was retained among the black-letter saints of the reformed English prayer book.
[Richard's life was written about 1270, soon after his canonisation, by his confessor, Ralph Bocking, a Dominican, at the request of Archbishop Kilwardby, then provincial of the English Dominicans, and dedicated to Isabella, countess of Arundel. It is very prolix and written ‘rudi sed veraci stylo’ (Trivet, p. 242). It is printed in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, April i. 276–318. A shorter fifteenth-century life from Capgrave is also printed in the same volume, pp. 278–82. More modern lives include Vita di San Ricardo Vescovo di Cicestria, &c. (Milano, 1706), to which are appended some prayers to St. Richard, and Stephen's memoir in Memorials of the See of Chichester, pp. 83–98, which contains the best recent life. Besides Bocking, the chief original sources are Matthew Paris's Hist. Major, Annales Monastici, Flores Historiarum, Rishanger's Chron. (all these in Rolls Series); Wilkins's Concilia, vol. i., Trivet (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Rymer's Fœdera; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl. i. 240–1, ed. Hardy; Godwin, De Præsulibus, pp. 205–6 (1743); Bliss's Papal Registers and Letters, vol. i.]
RICHARD de Gravesend (d. 1279), bishop of Lincoln. [See Gravesend.]
RICHARD de Abyndon, Abendon, or Abingdon (d. 1327?), judge, was probably a native of Abingdon, and possibly a brother
