Richard Newton (academic)

He was born at Yardley Park, Northamptonshire, a house which his father rented from Lord Northampton, on 8 November 1676.

He was educated at Westminster School, being admitted in 1690, and at Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 16 June 1694, graduating B.A.

On the recommendation of Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Newton was appointed Principal of Hart Hall, installed on 28 July 1710.

[2] Another of Newton's students at Hertford was George Augustus Selwyn, the politician and wit, who was rusticated in 1745 (he unregistered to avoid expulsion) for an irreverent joke that was deemed insulting to Christianity.

Newton built, at a cost of nearly £1,500, one-fourth part of a large quadrangle, consisting of a chapel, consecrated by John Potter, then Bishop of Oxford, on 25 November 1716, and an angle, containing fifteen single rooms; purchased the adjoining property at a cost of £160 more, and endowed the new institution with an annuity of £53 6s.

The other buildings, which were intended to comprise a library, hall, principal's lodgings, and further rooms for the students, were never erected, mainly through his disappointment in his expectations of assistance from the wealthy among his former pupils, and especially from the Pelhams.

Newton's statutes for Hertford College were strict, and aimed at economy and efficiency of supervision over the undergraduates by the tutors.

There are frequent sneers in the terræ filius oration of Nicholas Amhurst and the pamphlets of the period at his economical system of living.