[1] He was the eldest son of Sir Christopher Frederick Musgrave, 2nd Baronet and Jane Beere (a daughter of John Beere of Ballyboy, County Tipperary).
[3] Musgrave's uncle, and namesake, Sir Richard Musgrave had been a collector of excise for the port of Dublin and the author of an anti-Catholic History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and sat for Lismore in the Irish Parliament from 1778 to 1800.
On his death in 1818, his Irish estates and baronetcy had passed to his brother, Musgrave's father.
Thereafter he was active in the local repeal campaign and in 1843 publicly resigned his commission of the peace in protest at the Peel administration's dismissal of magistrates who had attended repeal meetings.
[citation needed] He succeeded to the baronetcy, of Tourin, in September 1826, which had been created for his uncle, Sir Richard Musgrave, in 1782.