In 1606 he was in receipt of a pension of half a crown a day, and in 1616 he was presented with a gift of £100 as being the oldest captain in the service.
He claims as his own invention the story of Apolonius and Silla, the second in the collection, from which Shakespeare took the plot of Twelfth Night.
The eighth, Phylotus and Emilia, a complicated story arising from the likeness and disguise of a brother and sister, is identical in plot with the anonymous play, Philotus, printed in Edinburgh in 1603.
[1] In the conclusion to his collection Rich tells a story of a devil named Balthasar, who possesses a king of Scots, prudently changed after the accession of James I to the Grand Turk.
Such are: Allarme to England (1578); A New Description of Ireland (1610); and The Irish Hubbub, or the English Hue and Crie (1617), in which he also inveighs against the use of tobacco.