Thomas Richardson (judge)

Sir Thomas Richardson (1569 – 4 February 1635) of Honingham in Norfolk,[2] was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622.

[2] The coat of arms he used (Argent, on a chief sable three lion's heads erased of the first) was certainly that of the ancient gentry family of Richardson, of many branches.

[8] When Parliament met on 30 January 1621, he was proposed Speaker of the House of Commons, having been prospectively selected by Sir Francis Bacon on Richardson's election.

Tradition dictated a convention for protesting such proposals, however in this instance Richardson "seeing no excuse would serve his turn, he wept downright".

[9] On 25 March 1621, he was knighted at Whitehall when he brought King James congratulations of the commons upon the recent censure of Sir Giles Mompesson.

In the same year he took part in the careful review of the law of constructive treason This arose from the case of Hugh Pine who was charged with that crime for speaking words that were derogatory to the king's majesty.

He was as lenient as he could be when he imposed a fine of £500 without imprisonment in the case of Richard Chambers, and his agreement with harsh sentences passed upon Alexander Leighton and William Prynne may have been dictated by timidity, and there contrast strongly with the tenderness which he showed Henry Sherfield, the iconoclastic bencher of Lincoln's Inn.

[11] He was not a puritan but in Lent 1632 he made and order, at the instance of the Somerset magistrates, for suppressing the 'wakes' or Sunday revels, which were a fertile source of crime in the county.

He then, at the ensuing summer Assizes (1633), laid the matter fairly before the justices and grand jury, professing his inability to comply with the royal mandate on the ground that the order had been made by the joint consent of the whole bench, and was in fact a mere confirmation and enlargement of similar orders made in the county since the time of Queen Elizabeth, all which he substantiated from the county records.