Richard Ponsonby (c.1678 – 29 November 1763) was an Irish member of parliament (MP) for a County Cork constituency and a justice of the peace (JP) for County Kerry.
He was the first of six surviving children of Susannah (née Grice) and Thomas Ponsonby of Crotta, where his family had been the landowners for two generations after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
His second marriage was to Arabella Blennerhassett (b.21 December 1726), 48 years his junior, daughter of Jane (née Denny) and Colonel John Blennerhassett of Ballyseedy.
Blennerhassett had made an agreement with Maurice Crosbie of Ardfert and Arthur Denny (politician) of Tralee to partition the county representation amongst the families.
The Ponsonbys at Crotta and other southern counties benefited from these agreements through marriage and other arrangements; Ponsonby's family, despite being tainted by legal disputes in his father's earlier years, became in favour with and increasingly influential within the Irish government.