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 represents him with a small head and keen features; the inscriptions have been obliterated. His will, dated 12 May, with a codicil dated 10 June 1567, was proved on 3 June 1568. His portrait, by Holbein, is preserved among the Holbein drawings in the Royal Library at Windsor; it has been engraved by Bartolozzi and R. Dalton.

Rich has been held up to universal execration by posterity; catholics have denounced him as the betrayer of More and Fisher, and protestants as the burner of martyrs. A time-server of the least admirable type, he was always found on the winning side, and he had a hand in the ruin of most of the prominent men of his time, not a few of whom had been his friends and benefactors—Wolsey, More, Fisher, Cromwell, Wriothesley, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, Somerset, and Northumberland. His readiness to serve the basest ends of tyranny and power justifies his description as ‘one of the most ominous names in the history of the age’. But his ability as a lawyer and man of business is beyond question. His religious predilections inclined to catholicism; but he did not allow them to stand in the way of his advancement. Few were more rapacious or had better opportunities for profiting by the dissolution of the monasteries; the manors he secured in Essex alone covered a considerable portion of the county. It should, however, be acknowledged that he used some of his ill-gotten wealth for a noble object, and that he was a patron of learning (, Epist. 1703, p. 322). In 1554 he founded a chaplaincy at Felsted, and made provision for the singing of masses and dirges and the ringing of bells. These observances were abolished at the accession of Elizabeth, and in May 1564 Rich founded a grammar school at Felsted, which afforded education to two sons of Oliver Cromwell, to Isaac Barrow, and to Wallis the mathematician. New buildings were commenced in 1860, and Felsted is now the principal school in the eastern counties. Rich also founded almshouses in Felsted, and built the tower of Rochford church. His own seat was Leighs Priory, which was purchased in 1735 by Guy's Hospital. His town house in Cloth Fair, Bartholomew Close, afterwards called Warwick House, is still standing (1896).

By his wife Elizabeth (d. 1558), daughter and heiress of William Jenks or Gynkes, grocer, of London, Rich had five sons and ten daughters. Of the sons, Sir Hugh, the second, was buried at Felsted on 27 Nov. 1554; the eldest, Robert (1537?–1581), succeeded to the title, and, unlike his father, accepted the doctrines of the Reformation. He was employed on various diplomatic negotiations by Elizabeth, and was one of the judges who tried the Duke of Norfolk for his share in the Ridolfi plot. He was succeeded in the title by his second son, Robert (afterwards Earl of Warwick) [see under ]. Of the daughters, Elizabeth married Sir Robert Peyton (d. 1590); Winifred (d. 1578) married, first, Sir Henry Dudley, eldest son of the future duke of Northumberland, and, secondly, Roger, second Lord North [q. v.], by whom she was mother of Sir John North [q. v.]; Ethelreda or Audrey married Robert, son of Sir William Drury of Hawsted, Suffolk, and cousin of Sir William Drury [q. v.]; Frances married John, lord D'Arcy of Chiche (d. 1580), son of the lord chamberlain to Edward VI. Rich had also four illegitimate children, of whom Richard was father of Sir Nathaniel Rich [q. v.]

[The best life of Rich, especially with regard to genealogical information, is contained in Sargeaunt's Hist. of Felsted School, pp. 80–8; other accounts are given in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, Foss's Judges, Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons, and Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr.; see also Letters and Papers of Hen. VIII, ed. Gairdner; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser.; Acts of the Privy Council; Rymer's Fœdera; Journals of the Houses of Lords and Commons; Parl. Hist.; State Trials; Hatfield MSS. pt. i.; Official Return of M.P.'s; Collins's State Papers; Wriothesley's Chronicle, Chron. of Calais, Chron. of Queen Jane, Troubles connected with the Prayer Book, The Suppression of the Monasteries, and Narr. of the Reformation (all in Camden Soc.); Camden's Elizabeth, 1717, i. 152; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club); Ellis's Original Letters; Stow's Annals; Holinshed's Chron.; Hayward's Raigne of Edward Sixt; Strype's Works; Foxe's Actes and Mon.; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Pocock; Fuller's Worthies and Church Hist.; Lloyd's State Worthies; Cresacre More and Roper's Lives of Sir Thos. More; Baily's Life of Fisher; Myles Davies's Athenæ Brit.; Nichols's Progr. of Elizabeth, i. 93; Visitations of Essex in 1562 and 1612 (Harl. Soc.); Dugdale's Baronage; Wotton's Baronets; Burke's Extinct Peerage; G. E. C.'s Peerage; Morant's Essex; Waters's Chesters of Chicheley; Archæologia, xviii. 161; Journal of the Archæol. Assoc. xxvi. 162–3; Tytler's Edward VI and Mary; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of England; Maitland's Essays on the Reformation; Lingard and Froude's Histories; Barrett's Highways and Byways of Essex; Revue Britannique, August 1846, p. 344.] 

RICH, RICHARD (fl. 1610), author of ‘Newes from Virginia,’ was possibly the Richard Rich, illegitimate son of Richard, first baron Rich [q. v.], and father of Sir Nathaniel Rich [q. v.] He is said to be related to Barnabe Rich [q. v.], and was a