Richard Rigby

Richard Rigby (February 1722-8 April, 1788), Secretary of Ireland, Paymaster of the Forces, was a member of the Rigby family also known as Rigby of Mistley Hall in Essex, the site of their manor. Originally, the family was descended from the Rigby of Burgh family. His father and immediate ancestors made a fortune as merchant drapers in the city of London and as merchants and colonial officers in the West Indies, as well as in the South Sea Bubble speculation. Richard Rigby accumulated a fortune of his own serving the Crown and politician wheeler dealers in the dynamic 18th century parliament.

Rigby was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the Middle Temple. He was elected Member of Parliament for Castle Rising in 1745, transferring to Sudbury at the next general election, and was initially a partisan of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Subsequently, he transferred his allegiance to the Duke of Bedford, sitting as MP for the Bedford pocket borough of Tavistock and eventually becoming the Bedford Whigs' permanent "man of business" in the House of Commons. In December 1755 he became a junior minister as one of the Lords of Trade. When Bedford was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1758, Rigby accompanied him as Secretary; the following year he was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and in 1762 was seriously considered for promotion to Secretary at War, but he preferred to remain in lucrative sinecures rather than to accept more substantive office, and instead he was made in 1765 joint Vice Treasurer of Ireland.

In 1768, Rigby was transferred to the perhaps the most lucrative of all government posts, Paymaster of the Forces, which he held for the next 16 years. He took a prominent part in opposing John Wilkes, and later led objections to a public funeral for Pitt the Elder. When he died in 1788, he was said to have left "nearly half a million of public money".

Rigby spent much of his fortune reinvesting in the family seats of Mistley and Manningtree, employing the top architects and landscape artists of the day to build a port and spa, which failed. The ruins survive as a tourist destination. Though other members of the family continued to bear the Rigby name and arms, the bulk of Richard Rigby's wealth fell to his daughter who married General Hale, and ultimately to the Pitt Rivers family whose members endowed the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University.

Richard Rigby's father was also named Richard Rigby, and was the Secretary of Jamaica, the Provost Marshal, and a member of the Royal assembly on that island in the late 17th and early 18th century. He was also part owner of a plantation in Antigua and a slave trader. At that time, the privateer trade was in its full glory as English sea captains with letters of marque from the Queen (and King) raided the Spanish Main. The privateer trade closely overlapped with general piracy, and thus Jamaica became known as a pirate haven, especially under the leadership of Governor Henry Morgan, himself a pirate. Port Royal of Jamaica was the headquarters of Caribbean piracy and privateering. Richard Rigby's brother, James Rigby, also served as a colonial officer on the island. Richard and James Rigby were sons of Edward Rigby of Mistley Hall, a London draper based in Covent Garden and landowner, and Anne Hyde, a close cousin of Queen Anne (Hyde), Queen Anne, Queen Mary, and the Earl of Clarendon. Edward and Ann had a town house in the parish of St Andrews High Holborn, Middlesex.

References

* Concise Dictionary of National Biography (1930)
* Lewis Namier & John Brooke, "The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754-1790" (London: HMSO, 1964)
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