Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/247

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

had rebuilt. A monument with a Latin inscription was erected to his memory. He married, at Luddenden chapel in Halifax on 9 Feb. 1699–1700, Sarah, only daughter and heiress of John Crossley of Kershaw House, Halifax. She died in childbed on 21 Oct. 1702, and was buried in Bradford church on 25 Oct. An infant son did not long survive (Sir W. Calverley's Notebook, Surtees Soc. lxxvii. 85, 88). His second wife, whom he married at Kildwick in Craven on 27 Dec. 1705, was Dorothy, second daughter of Henry Currer. She was born in 1687, died on 5 Jan. 1763, and was buried in Cleckheaton chapel. Of her twelve children, seven survived.

Dillenius, in the preface (p. vii) to the third edition of John Ray's ‘Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum,’ distinguishes Richardson and Sherard as the two men who, by repeated botanical investigations through England, had most enlarged the list of its plants, and fixed the habitats of specimens previously unsettled. Dillenius also makes grateful mention in his ‘Historia Muscorum’ (1741, Pref. p. viii) of Richardson's services in collecting mosses. Linnæus called a plant after him.

A portrait of Richardson belonged to Miss Currer. A print from it, by Basire, is in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literature’ (i. 225); another print from it, by Graf and Soret, is prefixed to his ‘Correspondence’ (1835); and a third, by W. O. Geller, is in James's ‘Bradford’ (p. 388).

[Foster's Alumni Oxon; Foster's Gray's Inn Reg. p. 331; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. i. 231–52; Pulteney's Botanical Sketches, ii. 185–7; James's Bradford, pp. 324–7, 388–93, and Continuation, App. pp. i–iv; Whitaker's Craven, ed. 1878, pp. 121, 122, 212–13, with view of Bierley Hall and pedigree; Whitaker's Leeds, pp. 357–8; Stewart's Cat. of Library at Eshton Hall, pp. 94, 431, 437.]

W. P. C.

RICHARD, ROBERT (d. 1578), prior of St. Mary's Isle and lord high treasurer of Scotland, was, according to Crawfurd (Officers of State, p. 383), descended from ‘a stock of ancient and opulent burgesses of Edinburgh,’ and was himself ‘a person of great wealth and credit.’ He studied at the university of St. Andrews, where he graduated M.A. in 1533.

The future lord high treasurer was one of the auditors of the treasurer's accounts in 1551 and 1552, and he is mentioned in 1554–5 as connected with the mint (Laing in Knox's Works, i. 372, on the authority of the ‘Treasurer's Accounts’). He is described as ‘servant of the queen and vicar of Eckfurd’ on 10 Feb. 1555–6, when he received under the great seal a charter of the lands of Nether Gogar, Midlothian (Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot. 1546–80, No. 1041). On the death of the lord high treasurer, Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassilis, in France on 14 Nov. 1558, Richardson, then described as ‘burgensis de Edinburgh,’ was made general of the mint, and, as clerk of the treasurer, he officiated as lord high treasurer until he was formally appointed to that office on 5 March 1560–1. On the last day of March 1558–9 he was made prior of St. Mary's, Isle of Trail, near Kirkcudbright, a dignity which enabled him to sit as a lord and member of parliament. He first sat as member of the privy council on 7 Jan. 1561–2 (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 195).

In 1558 the lords of the congregation seized from Richardson the mint and the printing irons with all the ready money he had on hand (Leslie, History of Scotland, Bannatyne Club, p. 275); but they afterwards defended themselves from the charge of spoliation on the ground that they wished to stop the corruption of the coinage, and that they had paid him in coined and uncoined metal the value of what they seized (Knox, Works, i. 372–3). It was, however, stipulated in the agreement made at Leith on 24 July 1559 that the printers' irons should be returned to Richardson (ib. p. 377). Richardson is classed by Knox as among those present at the parliament convened at Edinburgh in July 1560 who had ‘renounced papistrie and openly professed Jesus Christ’ (ib. ii. 88); but he took no prominent part in the political or religious controversies of the time. In January 1563–1564 he was required to do penance before the whole congregation in Edinburgh for ‘getting a woman with child,’ Knox preaching the sermon (Randolph to Cecil in Knox's Works, vi. 527).

Richardson retained his office of treasurer after the marriage of Mary to Darnley; and, after the fall of Mary and her imprisonment, he adhered to the party of the lords. He was present at the coronation of the young king James VI at Stirling on 29 July 1567 (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 537), and at the convention at Perth in July 1569 he voted against the queen's divorce from Bothwell (ib. ii. 8). In 1567 he is mentioned as archdeacon of Teviotdale (Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot. 1546–80, No. 1938). He vacated the office of treasurer in 1571, being succeeded by William, fourth lord Ruthven (Lord Herries, Memoirs of the Reign of Mary, p. 138). In Crawfurd's ‘Officers of State’ the office is stated to have become vacant by the death of Richardson in 1571, but Richardson lived several years afterwards. It is probable