Legh Richmond

Legh Richmond (1772–1827) was a Church of England clergyman and writer. He is noted for tracts, narratives of conversion that innovated in the relation of stories of the poor and female subjects, and which were subsequently much imitated. He was also known for an influential collection of letters to his children, powerfully stating an evangelical attitude to childhood of the period, and by misprision sometimes taken as models for parental conversation and family life, for example by novelists, against Richmond's practice.

Life

He was born on 29 January 1772, in Liverpool, the son of Henry Richmond, physician and academic, and his wife Catherine Atherton. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was ordained deacon in June 1797 and took his MA in July of the same year. On 24 July 1797, two days after marrying Mary Chambers, he was appointed to the joint curacies of St. Mary's Church, Brading and St. John the Baptist Church, Yaverland on the Isle of Wight. He was ordained priest in February 1798.

Richmond was powerfully influenced by William Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity, and took a prominent interest in the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews and similar institutions.

In 1805 Richmond became assistant-chaplain to the Lock Hospital, London, for a short period. Later that year he was appointed rector of Turvey, Bedfordshire, as successor to Erasmus Middleton. The patron, Sarah Fuller, consulted Ambrose Serle; who recommended Richmond. He remained at Turvey for the rest of his life. He began taking pupils at the rectory, two being Charles Longuet Higgins and Walter Augustus Shirley, while teaching his own sons, but was not effectual and passed tuition on to his curates.