Author: Rich, Henry
Biography:
RICH, Henry (1799?-1869: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born at Stonehouse, Devon, probably in 1799 (1861 census, burial record, obituary) but possibly in 1797 (death certificate), one of six illegitimate children of Admiral Sir Thomas Rich (1733-1803) and Elizabeth Burt (1755-1805), the daughter of General William Mathew Burt, MP, Captain General and Governor of the Leeward Islands in the West Indies, and slave-owner. Boase and Venn (ACAD) give a birth date of 1803 but this seems unlikely because the chronological sequence of children in his mother’s will, the most detailed 1869 obituary, the 1861 census, and the burial record all point to an earlier birth. He went to school in Henley, Oxfordshire, and proceeded to Sandhurst. The 1869 obituary states that he was at decorated at the Battle of Kirkee and was present at the capture of Poonah in 1817 during the Third Maratha War. Although he is not recorded in Hodson or the India Office Library records, there is no reason to disbelieve the story--which also makes an 1803 birth most unlikely. Returning to England, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1821 but the same year migrated to Trinity (BA 1825). He was MP for Knaresborough (1837-41) and for Richmond (1846-65). He was Groom in Waiting to Queen Victoria (1837-41) and a Lord of the Treasury (1846-52). He was created baronet in 1863. He married Julia Tomkinson (1817-74), the youngest daughter of Rev. James Tomkinson of Dorfold Hall, Nantwich, Cheshire, on 7 Sept. 1852 at Acton. There was no issue. In London they lived at 16 Curzon Street, Mayfair. He died on 5 Nov. 1869 at the Bull Hotel, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, and was interred in the family vault at St. Andrew’s, Sonning, Berkshire. He left an estate valued at under £35,000. Apart from The Daughter of Herodias (1831), he published a number of pamphlets concerning the Whig administration’s Great Reform Act of 1832 and the role of the House of Lords. (Boase [1901], 3: 135; The Register, and Magazine of Biography [1869], 2: 303; ancestry.co.uk 17 Dec. 2023; MH 10 Sept. 1852; ILN 20 Nov. 1869) AA