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 let alone if he kept quiet. The outlawry was not reversed. In March 1815 he surrendered to the sheriff of Renfrewshire, and on 26 June, having pleaded guilty to the bulk of the indictment, was sentenced to a month's additional imprisonment pro forma.

In the spring of 1816, with capital lent him by Jeffrey, Cockburn, and others, he set up in Glasgow a warehouse for the sale of cotton and silk goods, and at the end of the year was introduced by Kirkman Finlay, the sitting member for Glasgow, to [q. v.] of New Lanark. The latter offered him the post of assistant schoolmaster, but retracted the offer when he became aware of Richmond's political opinions. In the meantime Richmond claimed to have been employed by Finlay in suppressing in Glasgow an alleged ‘reform’ conspiracy against the government. In December 1816, while he rejected an offer from the government of ‘a respectable and permanent situation,’ he promised, on condition that no publicity were ever given to his action, to prevent any outbreak on the part of the Glasgow conspirators. On 22 Feb. 1817 all the members of the reform committee were suddenly arrested, without his having been consulted. Richmond, according to his own account, was indignant, and offered to give evidence for the defence. A suspicion got abroad that he had manufactured the whole plot.

In May 1818 he refused the government's offer, made to him through Finlay, of a grant of land at the Cape and an outfit in return for his services. In February 1821 he accepted a sum of money, and, owing to the universal feeling against him in Glasgow, removed to Edinburgh. In 1824 Richmond published an able defence of his conduct, which, according to Cockburn, has ‘a general foundation of truth in it.’ A second edition appeared next year. In 1825 Hugh Dickson, a Glasgow weaver, held him up to derision as a contemptible informer in a pamphlet which was embodied in 1833 in ‘An Exposure of the Spy System in Glasgow, 1816–1820.’ Tait's ‘Edinburgh Magazine’ noticed the ‘Exposure’ favourably, and Richmond prosecuted for libel Tait's London agents, Simpkin & Marshall. The trial took place on 20 and 22 Dec. 1834 in the court of exchequer, Guildhall, before Baron Pack and a special jury. Richmond, who claimed 5,000l. damages, conducted his own case. He described himself as a London parliamentary agent. In the previous year, he declared, he had served as a soldier at Antwerp. He spoke for four hours with some ability, but was nonsuited. Notwithstanding the issue of the trial, Jeffery and Cockburn still expressed approval of Richmond's conduct, and the latter spoke of his ‘gentleness and air of melancholy thoughtfulness.’ Talfourd, who was counsel for the defence, told Cockburn he hated Richmond ‘the spy’ equally with ‘the English courts, Tam Campbell and Brougham’ (, Circuit Journeys, p. 33).

A portrait is prefixed to the ‘Exposure.’



RICHMOND, GEORGE (1809–1896), portrait-painter, son of [q. v.], miniature-painter, of 42 Half Moon Street, Mayfair, was born at Brompton, then a country village, on 28 March 1809. His mother, Ann Richmond, came of an Essex family named Oram, and was a woman of great beauty and force of character. One of his earliest recollections was the sight of the lifeguards marching to the cavalry barracks at Brompton on their return from the campaign of Waterloo, and he remembered when a lad walking for a mile beside the Duke of York, in order to sketch him for his father, from whom he received his first instruction in art. He went for a short time only to a day school kept by an old dame in Soho, and at fifteen became a student at the Royal Academy. Here he was much impressed by the personality of [q. v.], then professor of painting, formed a friendship, which lasted a lifetime, with (1805–1881) [q. v.], and had as fellow-students and companions [q. v.], Thomas Sidney Cooper, esq., R.A., and Frederick Tatham, whose sister he married. Among other early friends was John Giles, Palmer's cousin, and a man of devout life and deep religion, who deeply influenced the literary taste, general culture, and religious views of his friends. When Richmond was sixteen he met William Blake, of whom Palmer and Calvert were devoted admirers, at the house of John Linnell at Highgate. The same night Richmond walked home across the fields to Fountain Court with the poet and painter, who left on Richmond's mind a profound impression, ‘as though he had been walking with the prophet Isaiah.’ From this time till Blake's death, Richmond followed his guidance and inspiration in art. Traces of Blake's influence are seen in all Richmond's