John Richardson
Lawyer and judge from the United Kingdom
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(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Sir John Richardson was an English lawyer and judge. Life The third son of Anthony Richardson, a merchant of London, he was born in Copthall Court, Lothbury, on 3 March 1771. He was educated at Harrow School, and matriculated at University College, Oxford on 26 January 1789, graduated B.A. in 1792, taking the same year the Latin verse prize , and proceeded M.A. in 1795. He was admitted in June 1793 as a student at Lincoln's Inn. In early life, Richardson was closely associated with William Stevens, by whom he was supported while at college. They both worked for the repeal of the penal laws against the Scottish Episcopal Church. Richardson was an original member of "Nobody's Club". After practising for some years as a special pleader, Richardson was called to the bar in June 1803. He was counsel for William Cobbett on his trial, 24 May 1804, for printing and publishing libels on the lord-lieutenant of Ireland and other officials, which were in the form of letters signed "Juverna"; and also in the concurrent civil action of a similar nature brought against him by William Plunket, 1st Baron Plunket, the Solicitor General for Ireland. Richardson acted for Cobbett with William Adam. The author of the libel on the Irish officials was an Irish judge, Robert Johnson, justice of the Court of Common Pleas ; and when he was indicted at Westminster in June of the following year Richardson argued a plea to the jurisdiction, namely that, notwithstanding the Acts of Union 1800, the court of king's bench had no cognisance of offences done by Irishmen in Ireland. The plea was disallowed, Richardson appeared for Johnson in the trial which followed, and the matter ended in a nolle prosequi, although Johnson was forced to resign. At about the same time he converted the defence of Henry Delahay Symonds on his trial for libelling John Thomas Troy, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, into an attack on Catholicism. Not long afterwards he was chosen to fill the post of "devil" to the attorney-general.
