Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.
Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.
In 1569 Thomas Richardson was born.
On 27th November 1594 John Ashburnham (age 22) and [his future wife] Elizabeth Beaumont (age 17) were married at the Church of St Mary and All Saints, Stoughton [Map]. They had ten children.
In 1621 Thomas Richardson (age 52) was elected MP St Albans.
Before 13th June 1624 Thomas Richardson (age 55) and Ursula Southwell were married.
On or before 13th June 1624, the date she was buried at St Andrew's Church, Holborn [Map], [his wife] Ursula Southwell died.
On 20th February 1625 Thomas Richardson (age 56) was appointed King's Serjeant.
On 28th November 1626 Thomas Richardson (age 57) succeeded Sir Henry Hobart as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, after a vacancy of nearly a year.
All About History Books
The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke. Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.
On 14th December 1626 Thomas Richardson (age 57) and Elizabeth Beaumont (age 49) were married at St Giles' in the Fields Church [Map]. There was no issue from the marriage.
On or before 17th April 1628 [his step-daughter] Anne Ashburnham Lady Dering (age 23) died. She was buried on 17th April 1628.
On 13th November 1628 Thomas Richardson (age 59) ruled that it was illegal to use the rack to elicit confession from John Felton (age 33), the murderer of Duke of Buckingham. His opinion had the concurrence of his colleagues and marks a significant point in the history of English criminal jurisprudence.
In January 1631 Frederick Cornwallis 1st Baron Cornwallis (age 19) and [his step-daughter] Elizabeth Ashburnham (age 18) were married. After the wedding King Charles I (age 30), Henrietta Maria (age 21) and Susan Feilding, Countess of Denbigh (age 48) wrote to congratulate his mother Jane, Baroness Cornwallis Bacon (age 50), and ask her to forgive him for his disobedience and return him to her favour. Denbigh said Ashburnham was her cousin "though her family be unfortunate".
On 4th February 1633 [his step-daughter] Elizabeth Ashburnham (age 20) died.
John Evelyn's Diary. 3rd November 1633. This year my father (age 46) was appointed Sheriff, the last, as I think, who served in that honorable office for Surrey and Sussex, before they were disjoined. He had 116 servants in liveries, every one liveried in green satin doublets; divers gentlemen and persons of quality waited on him in the same garb and habit, which at that time (when thirty or forty was the usual retinue of the High Sheriff) was esteemed a great matter. Nor was this out of the least vanity that my father exceeded (who was one of the greatest decliners of it); but because he could not refuse the civility of his friends and relations, who voluntarily came themselves, or sent in their servants. But my father was afterward most unjustly and spitefully molested by that jeering judge, Richardson (age 64)1, for reprieving the execution of a woman, to gratify my Lord of Lindsey, then Admiral: but out of this he emerged with as much honor as trouble. The king made this year his progress into Scotland, and Duke James was born.
Note 1. He was made a Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1626, and of the King's Bench in 1631. There is a monument for him in Westminster Abbey. Fuller says lie hved too near the time to speak fully of him. He took on him to issue an order against keeping wakes on Sundays, which Laud, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, took up as an infringement of the rights of bishops, and got him severely reprimanded at the Council-table. He was owner of Starborough Castle, in Lingiield, in Surrey. — Manning and Bray's Mistory of Surrey,-vol. ii. p. 345.
On 4th February 1635 Thomas Richardson (age 66) died.
In 1651 [his former wife] Elizabeth Beaumont (age 74) died.