William Richards

William Richards (1749-1818) was born into a Baptist family in Wales. He attended Bristol Academy in 1773, after which he commenced his pastoral ministry at Pershore in 1775.  He left the next year for King’s Lynn, where he remained the rest of his life as minister to the Particular Baptist congregation there. His health, however, began to fail in 1795, and he spent most of the next three years in Wales, returning again to Wales in 1800 and 1801. He did not preach in King’s Lynn after 1802, although he never formally dissolved his pastoral position. After his wife’s death in 1805, Richard’s spent the next seven years largely in seclusion. During his career he moved away from strict Calvinism and Trinitarianism, endorsing Arianism and Sabellianism. The Unitarian Biographical Dictionary identifies him as an avowed Unitarian. He was an admirer of the political system of America and its tolerance of religion, eventually receiving an honorary degree from Rhode Island College. During the 1780s and ’90s he was a political radical and reformer, opponent of the slave trade, admirer of the French Revolution, and supporter of Catholic Emancipation. High Calvinists dominated his congregation at King’s Lynn, however, a situation that eventually created considerable problems for Richards as he espoused an Arian position. Among his publications are Reflections on French Atheism and on English Christianity (1794); Food for a Fast-Day; or, A Few Seasonable Hints for the Use of Those Good People who Believe in the Propriety and Efficacy of Public Fasts (1795); A Word in Season:  or a Plea for the Baptists (1804); The History of Lynn, Civil, Ecclesiastical, Political, Commercial, Biographical, Municipal, and Military, from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time (1812);  and Plain Hints and Brief Observations on Primitive Christianity in Some of its Leading Objects and Characteristic Bearings  (1818). See John Evans, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. William Richards, LL.D. (Chiswick: Charles Whittingham, 1819); The Baptists in King’s Lynn (Kings Lynn: [n.d.], 1939), 10, 12; George Carter, Unitarian Biographical Dictionary (London:  Unitarian Christian Publishing Office, 1902), 103-104; John Oddy, The Reverend William Richards (1749-1818) and his Friends: A Study of Ideas and Relationships (Nottingham: [n.d.], 1973); idem, “The Dissidence of William Richards,” Baptist Quarterly 27 (1977-1978), 118-127.