RICHARDS, George (d.1746), of Long Bredy, nr. Bridport, Dorset.

George Richards was the son of a Spanish merchant who had bought Long Bredy from the Hurdings and was sheriff of Dorset in 1710. His succession to the manor was unsuccessfully challenged in 1726 by relations, who, having abstracted the page recording his father’s marriage from the Litton Cheney register, asserted his illegitimacy.Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 184, 499. In January 1740 his father-in-law and the Earl of Coventry signed indentures for constructing a new harbour south of Bridport, to which Richards contributed part of the cost; and it was presumably on the Earl’s interest that he was returned for the borough in 1741,Ibid. 17; Proc. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club, xxxiii. 187. defeating a government supporter. An opposition Whig, he voted against Walpole’s nominee for the chairman of the elections committee, December 1741, abstained on the Hanoverians in 1742 and 1746, and voted against them in 1744. He died 25 Nov. 1746.