John Richardson (judge)

He was educated at Harrow School, and matriculated at University College, Oxford on 26 January 1789, graduated B.A.

in 1792, taking the same year the Latin verse prize (on the subject Mary Queen of Scots), and proceeded M.A.

He was counsel for William Cobbett on his trial, 24 May 1804, for printing and publishing libels on the lord-lieutenant of Ireland and other officials, which were in the form of letters signed "Juverna";[2] and also in the concurrent civil action of a similar nature brought against him by William Plunket, 1st Baron Plunket, the Solicitor General for Ireland.

[3] The author of the libel on the Irish officials was an Irish judge, Robert Johnson, justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland); and when he was indicted at Westminster in June of the following year Richardson argued a plea to the jurisdiction, namely that, notwithstanding the Acts of Union 1800, the court of king's bench had no cognisance of offences done by Irishmen in Ireland.

At about the same time he converted the defence of Henry Delahay Symonds on his trial for libelling John Thomas Troy, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, into an attack on Catholicism.

[1] In 1818 Richardson succeeded Sir Robert Dallas as puisne judge of the court of common pleas, also being made serjeant-at-law.