months-old infant, who fell ill and became blind. In these straits Charlotte opened a school, but, although it had some measure of success, she was forced to discontinue it in consequence of her own ill-health.
She had a natural liking for poetry, and, despite her defective education, had for many years been in the habit of writing verse. Her poems came under the notice of Mrs. Newcome Cappe, who appealed through the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for subscriptions to defray the expenses of printing a selection from them (cf. Gent. Mag. 1805 ii. 813, 846, 1808 ii. 697). The appeal was successful. Among the subscribers were Dr. and Miss Aiken, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Lenoir, Mrs. Meeke, and Messrs. Longman & Co., and six hundred more copies than the number subscribed for were sold. To the volume, which was published in 1806, Mrs. Cappe prefixed an account of the author. Mrs. Richardson's verses have little distinction, and are chiefly remarkable as the work of an uneducated woman. The poems are mainly religious or personal, such as paraphrases of passages from the New Testament or addresses to relatives and friends. Mrs. Richardson died about 1850.
Other works by Mrs. Richardson are: 1. ‘Waterloo, a Poem,’ 1815. 2. ‘Isaac and Rebecca, a Poem,’ 1817. 3. ‘Harvest, a Poem, with other Poetical Pieces,’ 1818. 4. ‘The Soldier's Child, or Virtue Triumphant: a Novel,’ 2 vols. 1821. 5. ‘Ludolph, or the Light of Nature, a Poem,’ 1823.
A contemporary, Mrs. Caroline Richardson (1777–1853), born at Forge, Dumfriesshire, on 24 Nov. 1777, wife of George Richardson, East India Company's servant, who died at Berhampore in 1826, published a volume of ‘Poems’ in 1829, which reached a third edition in the following year. She also wrote a novel, ‘Adonia,’ and several tales and essays. She died on 9 Nov. 1853 (Irving, Eminent Scotsmen, p. 433).
[Mrs. Cappe's Memoir prefixed to the Poems (1806); Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816.]
RICHARDSON, CHRISTOPHER (1618–1698), nonconformist divine, appears to have been born at Sheriff Hutton, Yorkshire, in 1618 (not at York, as often stated). Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated M.A. In 1646 he obtained the sequestered rectory of Kirkheaton, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, which he held till the Restoration, when, being a man of property, he purchased Lassell Hall in Kirkheaton parish, and made it his residence. Though disabled by the uniformity act of 1662, he continued to preach in his house, using the staircase as a pulpit. He was an intimate associate of Oliver Heywood [q. v.], in whose diaries is frequent mention of visits to Lassell Hall for religious exercises. Under the indulgence of 1672 he was licensed as chaplain to William Cotton of Denby Grange, Penistone, Yorkshire, and retained this connection till 1687, preaching also at Sheffield and at Norton, Derbyshire.
In 1687 he removed from Lassell Hall, and in his seventieth year became the founder of nonconformity in Liverpool. Availing himself of James II's declaration for liberty of conscience, he conducted worship in a building in Castle Hey (now Harrington Street). His services were fortnightly, and alternately he preached at Toxteth Park chapel, founded (1618) by Richard Mather [q. v.] This arrangement was maintained till his death in November or December 1698; he was buried on 5 Dec. in the graveyard of St. Nicholas's Church, Liverpool. In 1884 a tablet to his memory was erected in Kirkheaton church by his descendants. He married, first, Elizabeth (d. 1668), by whom he had a son Christopher; secondly, on 23 Jan. 1683, Hephzibah (b. 3 Jan. 1655, d. 1735), daughter of Edward Prime, ejected from a curacy at Sheffield; she survived Richardson, and married (25 July 1722) Robert Ferne (d. 1727), nonconformist minister of Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Portraits of Richardson and of his second wife are given in Nightingale.
[Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 795 (derived from Oliver Heywood, who began a life of Richardson on 2 Oct. 1699); Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 374; Wright's Funeral Sermon for Thomas Cotton, 1730, pp. 28 sq.; Hunter's Oliver Heywood, 1842, p. 253; Thom's Liverpool Churches and Chapels, 1854, pp. 66 sq.; Nonconformist Register (Turner), 1881, pp. 45, 114, 217, 297; Heywood's Diaries (Turner); Evans's Hist. of Renshaw Street Chapel, Liverpool, 1887, pp. 2, 174; Nightingale's Lancashire Nonconformity (1893), iii. 83 sq. 110 sq.; Extract from burial register of St. Nicholas, Liverpool.]
RICHARDSON, DAVID LESTER (1801–1865), poet and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1801. He became a cadet in the Bengal army, and went to India in 1819, but, though he became a major, he saw little military service, and was soon given civil employment. He served on the staff of the governor-general, Lord William Bentinck, and in the education department at Calcutta. In 1827 he returned to England, and founded the ‘London Weekly Review,’
