Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/253

 later years with additions; and in 1740 edited Sir Thomas Roe's ‘Negotiations in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte.’ His ‘Correspondence,’ selected from the ‘Original Manuscripts bequeathed to his family,’ was edited by Anna Letitia Barbauld in 1804 (London, 6 vols. 8vo).

[The chief authority for Richardson's life is the biographical account by Mrs. Barbauld prefixed to his Correspondence, 1804. Most of the letters, from which the correspondence is extracted, are now in the Forster Library at South Kensington. The collection includes many unpublished letters, copies of poems, &c., but does not contain all the letters used by Mrs. Barbauld. There is also a life in Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iv. 578–98, and many references in other volumes, see index. In ‘Notes and Queries,’ 5th ser. viii. 107, are extracts from a copy of ‘Clarissa,’ annotated by Richardson and Lady Bradshaigh; and in 4th ser. i. 885, iii. 375, some unpublished letters of Richardson.] 

RICHARDSON, SAMUEL (d. 1805), stenographer, was educated at the King's School, Chester, from 1736 to 1739. He afterwards kept an ‘academy’ in Foregate Street, Chester, and was also the pastor of a small church of particular baptists in that city. He had considerable shrewdness, and read widely in later life. He died at his house in Pepper Street, Chester, on 21 March 1805. He was the author of an ingenious treatise entitled ‘A New System of Short-hand, by which more may be written in one hour than in an hour and a half by any other system hitherto published, which is here fully demonstrated by a fair comparison with one of the best systems extant [Dr. Mavor's], with a short and easy method by which any person may determine, even before he learns this system, whether it will enable him to follow a speaker,’ Liverpool, 1800, 8vo; 2nd edit. Liverpool, 1802; 4th edit. London, 1810, 8vo; 5th edit. about 1820. This system was based on ‘new-invented lines’—viz. three horizontal and two perpendicular—intended, among other things, to express the first letter of every word. The use of the lines necessitated the preparation of a specially ruled paper, and the writing occupied a wide field. On this account the system gradually passed out of notice. A work entitled ‘Richardson's Shorthand Improved,’ by William Henshaw, appeared at London in 1831, and Thomas Roberts published at Denbigh in 1839 ‘Stenographia, neu Law Fer, yn ol trefn Mr. Samuel Richardson,’ &c., wherein the system is skilfully fitted to the orthography of the Welsh language. A modification of the system, adapted to Lewis's alphabet, was published by E. Hinton of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1826, and the scheme of lines and positions for denoting the initial letter of each word was also followed by Laming Warren Tears in his ‘One Step Further to Stenography,’ 1834, and his ‘Short Short Hand,’ 1852.

[Faulmann's Historische Grammatik der Stenographie, pp. 176–80; Gent. Mag. 1805, i. 487; Gibson's Bibliography of Shorthand; Levy's Hist. of Shorthand, p. 131; Lewis's Hist. Account of Shorthand, p. 174; Shorthand, a Scientific Mag. ii. 12–17; Zeibig's Geschichte der Geschwindschreibkunst, p. 210.] 

RICHARDSON, THOMAS (1569–1635), judge, son of William Richardson and Agnes, his wife, baptised at Hardwick, Norfolk, on 3 July 1569, matriculated as a pensioner from Christ's College, Cambridge, in June 1584. On 5 March 1586–7 he was admitted at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar on 28 Jan. 1594–5. In 1605 he was deputy steward to the dean and chapter of Norwich; afterwards he was recorder, successively, of Bury St. Edmunds and Norwich. He was Lent reader at Lincoln's Inn in 1614, and on 13 Oct. of that year became serjeant-at-law; about the same time he was made chancellor to the queen.

On the meeting of parliament on 30 Jan. 1620–1, Richardson was chosen speaker of the House of Commons, in which he sat for St. Albans. The excuses which he made before accepting this office appear to have been more than formal, for an eye-witness reports that he ‘wept downright.’ On 25 March 1621 he was knighted at Whitehall on conveying to the king the congratulations of the commons upon the recent censure of Sir Giles Mompesson [q. v.] In the chair he proved a veritable King Log, and the house had the good sense not to re-elect him. His term of office was marked by the degradation of Bacon. On 20 Feb. 1624–5 he was made king's serjeant; and on 28 Nov. 1626 he succeeded Sir Henry Hobart as lord chief justice of the common pleas, after a vacancy of nearly a year. His advancement was said to have cost him 17,000l. and his second marriage (see infra). His opinion, which had the concurrence of his colleagues, 13 Nov. 1628, that the proposed use of the rack to elicit confession from the Duke of Buckingham's murderer, Felton, was illegal, marks an epoch in the history of our criminal jurisprudence. In the following December he presided at the trial of three of the jesuits arrested in Clerkenwell, and secured the acquittal of two of them by requiring proof, which was not forthcoming, of their orders. 