Life

He was born at Penrhydd, near Haverfordwest

Haverfordwest

Haverfordwest is the county town of Pembrokeshire, Wales and serves as the County's principal commercial and administrative centre. Haverfordwest is the most populous urban area in Pembrokeshire, with a population of 13,367 in 2001; though its community boundaries make it the second most populous...

, Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....

, towards the end of 1749. His father, Henry Richards (died 1 July 1768, aged 59), was a farmer, who moved in 1758 to St. Clears, Carmarthenshire

Carmarthenshire

Carmarthenshire is a unitary authority in the south west of Wales and one of thirteen historic counties. It is the 3rd largest in Wales. Its three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford...

. He had only one year's schooling, in his twelfth year.

In 1768 he was admitted a member of the Particular Baptist congregation at Rhydwillim, Carmarthenshire. He became an occasional preacher at Salem Chapel, St. Clears, projected by his father and erected in 1769. In 1773 he became a student in the Baptist dissenting academy at Bristol, under Hugh Evans (1712–1781). Leaving in September 1775, he acted for about nine months as assistant to John Ash

John Ash (divine)

John Ash was an English Baptist minister at Pershore, Worcestershire, divine, and author of an English dictionary and grammar books.-Life:...

 at Pershore

Pershore

Pershore is a market town in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon. Pershore is in the Wychavon district and is part of the West Worcestershire parliamentary constituency. At the 2001 census the population was 7,304...

, Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

.

On the recommendation of Hugh Evans, he was invited to an unsettled congregation in Broad Street, Lynn, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, and agreed to go for a year, from 7 July 1776. During this year he succeeded in healing divisions and organising his flock as a baptist church; his settlement as regular pastor at Lynn dates from 1778. He declined a call to Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

. He was an assiduous preacher, conducting three services each Sunday without notes. When absent on his visits to Wales, his place was taken by Timothy Durrant. In 1793 he received the diploma of M.A. from Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

, a Baptist foundation.

In September 1795 he left Lynn for Wales, being in poor health and not returning until March 1798; he more than once tendered his resignation as pastor. He was again in Wales, during the whole of 1800 and 1801, and did not minister to his flock at Lynn after 1802, though the connection was never formally dissolved. He remained theoretically a close-communion Baptist, but abandoned Calvinism

Calvinism

Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...

. While in South Wales he promoted an Arminian secession from Baptist churches, having relations with the new connexion of General Baptist

General Baptist

General Baptists is a generic term for Baptists who hold the view of a general atonement, as well as a specific name of groups of Baptists within the broader category.General Baptists are distinguished from Particular or Reformed Baptists.-History:...

s. He has been claimed by the Unitarians, but held aloof from the Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

 school, and maintained Sabellian

Sabellian

Sabellian can refer to*Sabellian, a believer in Sabellianism, the nontrinitarian belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God, rather than three distinct persons in God Himself...

 principles on the worship of Jesus Christ.

During a part of 1802 he conducted a morning service in the vacant Presbyterian chapel at Lynn. He was a strong advocate of slave emancipation, and was an honorary member of the Pennsylvania abolitionist society. On the loss of his wife in 1805 he secluded himself for seven years. In 1811 his successor at Broad Street, Thomas Finch, was dismissed for anti-Calvinistic heresy, and Richards interested himself in the erection of a new building, Salem Chapel, opened (1811) on General Baptist principles, but he rarely preached there. The congregation became Unitarian, and later dispersed.

On 6 September 1818 Richards was admitted LL.D. by Brown University, but did not live to be aware of the honour. He died at Lynn on 13 September 1818 of angina pectoris, and was buried on 17 September in the graveyard of the General Baptist chapel. He married (1803) Emiah (d. 3 Jan. 1805, aged 28), daughter of a Welsh farmer, but had no issue. His library, thirteen hundred volumes, he bequeathed to Brown University; his other property to his sister, Martha Evans.

Works

In 1812 Richards published his best-known work, ‘The History of Lynn, Civil, Ecclesiastical, Political, Commercial, Biographical, Municipal, and Military, from the earliest accounts to the present time … to which is prefixed … an introductory account of Marshland, Wisbech, and the Fens’ (Lynn, 2 vols.; with aquatint plates after drawings by James Sillet). The collections of Guybon Goddard (d. 1677), the brother-in-law of Sir William Dugdale, freely used by Richards's predecessor, Benjamin Mackerell in his ‘History of King's Lynn’ (1738), and by Charles Parkin

Charles Parkin

-Life:The son of William Parkin of London, he was born on 11 January 1689, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School. He went in 1708 to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. 1711, M.A. 1717...

 in his ‘Topography of Freebridge Hundred and Half’, had been lost before Richards began writing; and he was denied free access to municipal records, so that his materials for the mediæval history of the town were limited. The chronicles of Lynn are brought down from Anglo-Saxon times to 1812, and the work is supplemented by biographical sketches, and by topographical and statistical information, with account of the religious houses formerly in Lynn, and of the progress of dissent

English Dissenters

English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....

 in the town. He estimated that deists were the largest local group.

Richards published pamphlets and single sermons and also:

• ‘A Review of … Strictures on Infant Baptism,’ &c., Lynn, 1781.
• ‘Observations on Infant Sprinkling,’ &c., Lynn, 1781.
• ‘The History of Antichrist, or Free Thoughts on the Corruptions of Christianity,’ &c., Lynn, 1784; in Welsh, ‘Llun Anghrist,’ &c., Carmarthen, 1790, (these three publications were in controversy with John Carter, independent minister of Mattishall
  Mattishall
  Mattishall is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is situated in the heart of Norfolk 13 miles from the centre of Norwich and four miles from Dereham, at the geographical centre of Norfolk....
  
  , Norfolk).
• ‘A Review of the Memoirs of … Cromwell, by … Noble,’ &c., Lynn, 1787.
• ‘A Serious Discourse concerning Infant Baptism,’ &c., Lynn, 1793.
• ‘A Welsh-English Dictionary,’ &c., 1798; a companion English-Welsh dictionary was partly completed by Richards in manuscript; an edition of both dictionaries was published at Carmarthen, 1828–32, 2 vols.
• ‘A Word … for the Baptists,’ &c., 1804, (in controversy with Isaac Allen, independent minister of Lynn).
• ‘The Perpetuity of Infant Baptism,’ &c., 1806.
• ‘The Seasonable Monitor,’ &c., Lynn, 1812–18 (seven parts).

Posthumous was ‘The Welsh Nonconformists' Memorial; or, Eambro-British [sic] Biography,’ &c., 1820, (edited by John Evans

John Evans (Baptist)

-Life:He was born at Usk in Monmouthshire, 2 October 1767. After schooling in Bristol he became a student in November 1783 in the Baptist academy there, where his relative Dr. Caleb Evans was theological tutor. During part of the time Robert Hall was his classical tutor. In 1787 he matriculated at...

). A miscellaneous collection, much of it, including an account of Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus

Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation...

, had originally appeared in the Monthly Repository

Monthly Repository

The Monthly Repository was a British monthly Unitarian periodical which ran between 1806 and 1838.The Monthly Repository was established when Robert Aspland bought William Vidler's Universal Theological Magazine and changed the name to the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature...

with the signature ‘Gwilym Emlyn.’ To the Gentleman's Magazine, October 1789, he contributed a letter (dated 14 October 1789, and signed Gwilym Dyfed), supporting the story of the discovery of America by Madoc

Madoc

Madoc or Madog ab Owain Gwynedd was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd who took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home...

. He wrote for the three volumes of the Cambrian Register, 1796–1818.