Born on May 6, 1710, to Elizabeth Randolph (1680–1720) (daughter of William Randolph), the second wife of prominent planter Richard Bland, he was born either at his father's main plantation on the James River called "Jordan's Point" or at the family's "Bland House" in Williamsburg.

[2][6] Both his mother and father were of the First Families of Virginia, intermarrying and wielding economic, social and political power in the colony for generations.

[7][8] As his family's second son in an age of primogeniture, Richard Bland I moved further upstream on the James River and started his own plantation, on land his father had purchased in 1656, and which became located in Prince George County, Virginia.

Richard attended the College of William & Mary and, like many of his time, completed his education in Scotland at Edinburgh University.

[2] Although Upon reaching legal age, Bland inherited his father's Jordan Point plantation and other land.

[2] Bland served as a justice of the peace in Prince George County and was made a militia officer in 1739.

He did not practice before the courts but collected legal documents and became known for his expertise in Virginia and British history and law.

His first widely distributed public paper came as a result of the Parson's Cause, which was a debate from 1759 to 1760 over the established church and the kind and rate of taxes used to pay the Anglican clergy.

His pamphlet A Letter to the Clergy on the Two-penny Act was printed in 1760, as he opposed increasing pay and the creation of a bishop for the colonies.

While he concludes that the colonies were subject to the crown and that colonists should enjoy the rights of Englishmen, he questions the presumption that total authority and government came through parliament and its laws.

In May, he travelled to Philadelphia for the opening of the Second Continental Congress, but soon returned home, withdrawing because of the poor health and failing eyesight of old age.

However, his radicalism had increased, and by the convention's meeting in July, he proposed hanging Lord Dunmore, the royal governor.

In the first state convention meeting of 1776, Richard Bland declined a re-election to the Third Continental Congress, citing his age and health.

She died late in April 1775, and like Martha Massie Boling, bore no children during her marriage to Richard Bland.