Zinder, Barth by Kanou and Kouka, Overweg by Tesaoua and Maradi. This last part of the journey, however, prostrated Richardson, whose constitution had already been undermined by the African climate. With great exertions he advanced to Ungouratona, about twelve or fifteen days' journey from Lake Tchad, and here, on 4 March 1851, he succumbed to the heat of the sun, which brought on fever, and to injudicious use of medicines. The people of the village buried him with honour. His notes and papers were collected and brought to England. Richardson had kept his journal down to 21 Feb.
He is best known by his three larger works: (1) ‘Travels in Morocco,’ the record of his earliest journey, but the last to be published, nine years after his death, by his widow, who edited the book and wrote a short preface, London, 2 vols. 1860; (2) ‘Travels in the Desert of Sahara, 1845–6,’ &c. 2 vols. London, 1848; (3) ‘Mission to Central Africa, 1850–1, under the order of Her Majesty's Government,’ a narrative which, like that of the Moroccan journey, was published posthumously, 2 vols. London, 1853, with a preface by Mr. Bayle St. John.
Of these, the last is the most valuable. In his Morocco travels Richardson borrows at length from the writings of previous travellers, the older Leo Africanus, as well as the more modern Keating, Durrieu, Jackson, Hay, Lemprière, Denham, Clapperton, and others. In his Saharan and Central African journeys he traversed a great deal of ground then very slightly known, and a considerable tract that had never been described, even if visited, by any earlier European. He undertook his travels largely to find out the causes and remedies of slave traffic. The blame he attributes chiefly to European raiders. His account of Mussulman society, manners, and religion is fair and appreciative.
Besides these longer treatises, Richardson also wrote: 4. ‘A Transcript and edition of the Touarick Alphabet, with Native Drawings,’ London, 1847. 5. A pamphlet called ‘The Cruisers, being a Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne in Defence of Armed Coercion for the Extinction of the Slave Trade,’ London, 1849. This repeated and enlarged the advice given in the postscript (p. xxxi) of the introduction to the ‘Sahara Travels,’ not to withdraw the British cruisers from the west coast of Africa, which he regarded as equivalent to letting loose upon the negro a ‘legion of pirates and murderers.’ He further composed (6) ‘Dialogues in the English, Arabic, Haussa, and Bornu Languages,’ and translated a small part of the New Testament for the same parallel use, 1853. A portrait of Richardson in Ghadamese costume is engraved as the frontispiece to vol. i. of his ‘Sahara Travels.’
[Richardson's six works as cited above; Allibone's Dict. Brit. and Amer. Authors, ii. 1793; Times, 20 Sept. 1851; Athenæum, 1848 p. 103, 1859 ii. 769, 1860 i. 245; Bayard Taylor's Cycl. of Mod. Travel, pp. 871, 885; Annals of our Time, 1837–71, p. 321, for 4 March 1851, the date of the traveller's death; Alfred Maury in Nouvelle Biogr. Générale, xlii, 196–7; Michaud's Biogr. Univ. ed. of 1842–66.]
RICHARDSON, JOHN, D.D. (d. 1625), biblical scholar, born ‘of honest parentage’ at Linton, Cambridgeshire, was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1581. He was afterwards elected to a fellowship at Emmanuel College. He proceeded M.A. in 1585, B.D. in 1592, and D.D. in 1597. In 1607 he was appointed regius professor of divinity in succession to Dr. John Overall [q. v.] Some notes of his ‘Lectiones de Predestinatione’ are preserved in manuscript in Cambridge University Library (Gg. i. 29, pt. ii.). He and Richard Thomson were among the first of the Cambridge divines who maintained the doctrine of Arminius in opposition to the Calvinists. Heylyn relates that ‘being a corpulent man, he was publicly reproached, in St. Marie's pulpit in his own university, by the name of a Fat-bellied Arminian’ (Cyprianus Anglicus, 1671, p. 122).
On the death of Dr. Robert Some [q. v.], he was admitted by the bishop of Ely on 30 Jan. 1608–9 to the mastership of Peterhouse (Addit. MS. 5843, f. 32b). He was an excellent hebraist, and was appointed one of the translators of the Bible, being one of the company which was responsible for the rendering into English of 1 Chronicles to Ecclesiastes, inclusive (Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, ii. 375; Maclure, Translators Revived, p. 104). On the occasion of James I's first visit to Cambridge an extraordinary act in divinity was kept on 7 March 1614–15, Dr. John Davenant being answerer, and Richardson one of the opposers. He argued for the excommunication of kings, vigorously pressing the practice of St. Ambrose in excommunicating the Emperor Theodosius; and the king, with some passion, remarked, ‘Profecto fuit hoc Ambrosio insolentissimè factum!’ Richardson rejoined, ‘Responsum verè regium, et Alexandro dignum! Hoc non est argumenta dissolvere, sed dissecare,’ and sitting down, he desisted from any further dispute (Fuller, Worthies, ed. Nichols, i. 163; Nichols, Progresses of James I, iii. 56, 57, iv. 1087). He was admitted and sworn master of Trinity College
