been compelled, only half an hour before, to surrender. Vendôme with twenty thousand men opposed von Staremberg, and on the 10th opened a cannonade which was replied to by Richards, and lasted an hour and a half. The battle, stubbornly contested, was nominally won by von Staremberg, who found himself in possession of the field, but with neither food nor transport. Richards's train was almost annihilated. The victorious army retreated into Catalonia, arriving at Barcelona on 6 Jan. 1711. There Richards, who was promoted brigadier-general on 17 Feb. 1711, remained, settling questions connected with the defence of the town.
On 11 Sept. 1711 Richards was, owing to the good offices of Marlborough, appointed chief engineer of Great Britain, and returned to England. In August 1712 he submitted to the board of ordnance a long report on the defences of Port Mahon. On 19 Nov. 1714 Richards was appointed master-surveyor or surveyor-general of the ordnance, and assistant and deputy to the lieutenant-general of the ordnance. While holding this position he was most active in visiting the works in progress at Sheerness, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. In 1716, at his instance and under his direction and that of Colonel Armstrong, a colleague on the board of ordnance and his successor as chief engineer of Great Britain, the ordnance train was converted into a regiment (the present royal artillery) independent of the king's engineers, while at the same time the mother corps was increased and reorganised. In 1720 the same officers founded the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.
Richards died on 5 Feb. 1721, and was buried at Old Charlton, Kent. A monument was erected to his memory in Charlton church by his three nieces and executrices (daughters of James Craggs the elder [q. v.], who married Richards's sister Elizabeth), viz. Ann, wife of John Knight of Essex; Elizabeth, widow of Edward Eliot of Cornwall; and Dame Margaret, wife of Sir John Hynde Cotton of Cambridgeshire, bart.
Richards's portrait was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1719 and engraved by Faber in 1735.
[Royal Engineers' Records; Kings' Warrants; Board of Ordnance Minutes; Brodrick's Compleat History of the late War in the Netherlands, 1713; Diary of the Siege of Limerick, 1692; Murray's Despatches of the Duke of Marlborough; Coxe's Life of Marlborough; Hasted's Hist. of Kent; Cust's Annals of the Wars of the Eighteenth Century; Parnell's War of the Succession in Spain; Porter's History of the Corps of Royal Engineers.]
RICHARDS, NATHANIEL (fl. 1630–1654), dramatist, son of Richard Richards, rector of Kentisbury in Devonshire, was born at the parsonage there about 1612. After a grounding during four years at Torrington school, he was admitted on 28 Feb. 1628–9 at Caius College, Cambridge, where he held a scholarship for three years, and whence he graduated LL.B. in 1634. He was for some time master of St. Alban's school, London, and later appears to have succeeded his father at Kentisbury, where he was ‘preaching minister’ in 1654.
He issued in 1630 ‘The Celestiall Pvblican, a Sacred Poem: lively describing the Birth, Progresse, Bloudy Passion, and glorious Resurection of our Saviovr, The Spiritvall Sea-Fight, The Mischievous Deceites of the World, the Flesh, The Vicious Courtier, The Jesuite, The Divell,’ &c., London, for Roger Michell, 8vo. At the end are epitaphs on James I, Sir Francis Carew, and others, with an anagram on Sir Julius Cæsar and verses on the author's friend, Sir Henry Hart, K.B. (the British Museum and Huth Libraries contain perfect copies, no others are known). These poems were reprinted, with a few additions, in 1641, under the title ‘Poems Sacred and Satyricall,’ London, for H. Blunden, 1641, at the Castle in Cornhill (8vo) (Fry, Bibliographical Memoranda, pp. 82-94). A few unsold copies were issued with a new title and some unimportant omissions in 1632 (for James Boler, 8vo) as ‘Poems, Divine, Morall, and Satyricall’ (unique copy in Huth Library; cf. Corser, Collect. Anglo.-Poet.)
In 1640 was printed Richards's chief work, ‘The Tragedy of Messallina, the Roman Emperesse. As it has been acted with generall applause divers times, by the company of his Maiesties Revells,’ London, for Daniel Frere, 8vo. The work is dedicated to John Cary, viscount Rochford, and there are complimentary verses by Robert Davenport, Thomas Jordan, Thomas Rawlins, and others. In spite of absurdities, such as the introduction of firearms and a hundred vestal virgins are absurdly introduced, this is a good historical play (for the plot see Genest, x. 113), the details of which are drawn from Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and the sixth satire of Juvenal. ‘Messallina’ is one of the few pre-Restoration plays that have a list of performers: these include William Cartwright senior (Claudius), John Robinson (Saufellus), Christopher Goad (Silius), John Barret (Messalina), and Thomas Jordan (Lepida).
Engraved portraits of Richards, with a
