Description
Autograph Letter Signed ‘W.Richardson’, addressed ‘Dear Madam’, discussing Mr.Alleyne’s legacy to the College, providing the name of the London bookseller who gives receipts in the name of the College, and refusing to enter a private dispute about a memorial in Loughborough chancel and other points of disagreement with Mr.Alleyne’s heirs. 2 pp. 8 x 6½ inches, offsetting, light spotting, but of good appearance. A pencilled note indicates the recipient as ‘Miss E Coltman, Leicester (part of the Gifford/Bakewell corr.)’ E.C. [Emmanuel College], 9 October 1762. William Richardson (1698–1775), antiquary, and Master of Emmanuel College Cambridge from 1736. At Emmanuel, Richardson proved a great builder. First of all he sponsored a scheme for a new western range by Sir James Burrough, the tory master of Gonville and Caius College and eminent amateur architect. This foundered because Richardson tried to incorporate the fellows’ parlour in the master’s lodge and give them new quarters at the other end of the hall—a fact which may lie behind the account of William Bennet, a fellow under Richardson from 1763, later tutor and bishop of Cork and Ross, and Cloyne, in Ireland: ‘He was a most strict and unpleasant master to his fellows, but had a great regard for the prosperity of the body, with a gentleman-like behaviour, and a liberal mind’. [DNB] “I am sorry to find Disputes are risen between my friend Mr.Alleyne’s Representative & his Successors; & shd be pleas’d to see Expedients found to accomodate their Differences; but do not perceive that it can be done, but by the Intervention of common friends on the spot.”