William Richardson (antiquary)

He was educated at Oakham and Westminster School, and was admitted on 19 March 1716 as a pensioner at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was elected scholar.

On the resignation of his father he was appointed prebendary of Welton Rivall in Lincoln Cathedral on 19 October 1724, and held that prebend until 1760.

Richardson was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 19 June 1735; William Stukeley noted he had a good coin collection.

In 1737 and in 1769 (on this occasion after a contest with Roger Long) he was elected vice-chancellor of the university, and from 1746 to 1768, when he resigned the post, he was one of the king's chaplains.

Archbishop John Potter, in his will, dated 12 August 1745, left his executors all his options in ecclesiastical preferments, but asked them to have regard in the distribution to Richardson and other friends.

He also appealed in the will to Richardson to correct his account of Archbishop Thomas Tenison in his new edition of Godwin's De Præsulibus.

[2] When the precentorship of Lincoln, one of Potter's options, became vacant on 18 May 1756, Richardson claimed it, and filed a bill in chancery against Archdeacon John Chapman, another claimant.

In 1728 he married at St. Olave's Anne, only daughter and heiress of William Howe of Cheshire, and widow of Captain David Durell.