Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Richards, Thomas (d.1564?)
RICHARDS, THOMAS (d. 1564?), translator, was born in Devonshire, and took the habit of a Benedictine monk at Tavistock. He supplicated B.D. at Oxford on 29 Oct. 1515, and in 1517 qualified as B.D. of Cambridge. He was elected prior of Totnes, Devonshire, on 27 Feb. 1528, and held office at the suppression of that house. Sir Peter Edgcumbe, on whose father the priory was bestowed by Henry VIII, wrote of Richards to Thomas Cromwell as a ‘man of goode and vertuus converssacyon and a good viander.’ At the dissolution of the monasteries he obtained the rectory of St. George's, Exeter, where he died in 1563 or 1564, his will, dated 10 Aug. 1563, being proved on 14 April 1564. Wood says that while at Totnes, Richards translated the ‘Consolatio Philosophiæ’ of Boethius, at the desire of Robert Langton, and that his version was printed at Tavistock. But the work is not known to be extant. Bliss suggests that Richards was the printer only.
[Cooper's Athenæ, i. 233; Oliver's Hist. Coll. relating to Monasteries in Devon, p. 109; Dugdale's Monasticon, ed. Caley, iv. 629, 632; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714, iii. 1253; Wright's Letters relating to the Suppression of Monasteries, publ. by Camden Soc. 1843, pp. 117, 118.]