Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/227

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Carmarthen, 1790, 12mo (these three publications are in controversy with John Carter, independent minister of Mattishall, Norfolk). 4. ‘A Review of the Memoirs of … Cromwell, by … Noble,’ &c., Lynn, 1787, 8vo (a work of merit; full of Welsh patriotism). 5. ‘A Serious Discourse concerning Infant Baptism,’ &c., Lynn, 1793, 8vo. 6. ‘A Welsh-English Dictionary,’ &c., 1798, 12mo; a companion English-Welsh dictionary was partly executed by Richards in manuscript; an edition of both dictionaries was published at Carmarthen, 1828–32, 12mo, 2 vols. 7. ‘A Word … for the Baptists,’ &c., 1804, 12mo (in controversy with Isaac Allen, independent minister of Lynn). 8. ‘The Perpetuity of Infant Baptism,’ &c., 1806, 8vo. 9. ‘The Seasonable Monitor,’ &c., Lynn, 1812–18, 12mo (seven parts). Posthumous was 10. ‘The Welsh Nonconformists' Memorial; or, Eambro-British [sic] Biography,’ &c., 1820, 12mo (edited by John Evans (1767–1827) [q. v.]; a very miscellaneous collection; much of it, including an account of Servetus, originally appeared in the ‘Monthly Repository,’ with the signature ‘Gwilym Emlyn.’ To the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ October 1789, he contributed a letter (dated 14 Oct. 1789, and signed Gwilym Dyfed), supporting the absurd story of the discovery of America by Madoc. He wrote for the three volumes of the ‘Cambrian Register,’ 1796–1818.

[Memoirs by Evans, 1819, portrait (the date of death, 1819, on title-page is a misprint); Browne's Hist. Congr. Norfolk and Suffolk, 1877, p. 562; Rees's Hist. Prot. Nonconformity in Wales, 1883, p. 389; Stephens's Madoc, 1893, p. 78; notes kindly communicated by Walter Rye, esq. and by E. M. Beloe, esq., F.S.A.]

A. G.

RICHARDS, WILLIAM UPTON (1811–1873), divine, only son of William Richards of Penryn, Cornwall, and his wife, Elizabeth Rose Thomas, was born at Penryn on 2 March 1811. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, on 29 April 1829, graduating B.A. in 1833, and M.A. in 1839. In 1833 he became an assistant in the manuscript department of the British Museum, and in this capacity he compiled an index to the Egerton MSS., and the Additional MSS. acquired between 1783 and 1835; it was printed by order of the trustees in 1849. In that year he gave up his post at the British Museum on becoming vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street, Marylebone. Richards was a warm adherent of the tractarian movement, and formed a friendship with Pusey, who in 1850 addressed to him a published letter in which he formulated his opinion on the practice of private confession and absolution in the Church of England. In June 1851 Richards addressed a letter to C. J. Blomfield, bishop of London, denouncing the permission granted to Merle d'Aubigné and other foreign protestants to preach in English churches as ‘an outrage upon our church,’ and ‘apparently reducing our apostolic church to an equality with those modern sects’ (Browne, Annals of the Tractarian Movement, pp. 230–2). In the same year Richards founded an English sisterhood in his parish called the All Saints' Home. He died at his residence, 10 St. Andrew's Place, Regent's Park, on 16 June 1873. Two funeral sermons, preached by the Rev. George Body at All Saints, were published under the title, ‘The Parting of Elijah and Elisha,’ 1873, 8vo. Besides sermons, Richards wrote ‘Devotions for Children,’ 1857, 12mo; ‘The Life of Faith,’ 1860, 16mo, 3rd ed. 1867, 4th ed. 1872; ‘The Great Truths of the Christian Religion,’ in five parts, 1862, 8vo, 3rd ed. 1869, and translated from the French Courbon's ‘Familiar Instructions on Mental Prayer,’ 1848, 32mo (with additions, 1852 and 1856).

[Works in Brit. Mus. Libr.; Liddon's Life of Pusey, iii. 18, 266, 269; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub.; Times, 20 June 1873; Guardian, 1873, pp. 841–843.]

A. F. P.

RICHARDSON, CHARLES (1775–1865), lexicographer, was born at Tulse Hill in July 1775 and bred to the law, but quitted it early for scholastic and literary pursuits. He kept a well-known school on Clapham Common, and among his pupils there were Charles James Mathews [q. v.], who assisted Richardson as a copyist; John Mitchell Kemble [q. v.], and John Maddison Morton [q. v.], the dramatist. Mathews (Life of C. J. Mathews, ed. Dickens, i. 25) says: ‘Dr. Richardson was fond of horse exercise, and I was allowed a pony, and at five o'clock on summer mornings we used to sally forth together over the Surrey hills. … Among the obligations I owe to him, one of the deepest is that of first having my eyes opened by him to the real enjoyment of the ancient classics.’

Richardson was an ardent philologist of the school of Horne Tooke. In 1815 he published ‘Illustrations to English Philology,’ consisting of a critical examination of Dr. Johnson's ‘Dictionary,’ and a reply to Dugald Stewart's criticism of Horne Tooke's ‘Diversions of Purley.’ The book was reissued in 1826. In 1818 the opening portions of an English lexicon, by Richardson, appeared in the ‘Encyclopædia Metropoli-