RICHARDS, WILLIAM UPTON, 1811-1873.
Letters to W. Gresley, 1851.

MANUSCRIPT NUMBER 307

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CITATION:  William Upton Richards letters to W. Gresley, MSS 307, Archives and Manuscripts Dept., Pitts Theology Library, Emory University.  

William Upton Richards, a Church of England clergyman, was born at Penryn, Cornwall on 2 March 1811 to William Richards and Elizabeth Rose Thomas. He studied at Exeter College Cambridge, earning the BA in 1833 and the MA in 1839. Richards worked in the manuscript department of the British Museum from 1833 to 1849, and was ordained in 1837. Shortly after his ordination, he was appointed assistant minister of St. Margaret's Chapel in west London. He became minister of St. Margaret's (later the parish of All Saints) in 1845.

Richards was a Tractarian and friend of E.B. Pusey. Pusey's 1850 letter on the role of private confession in the Church of England was addressed to Richards.

Richards died at home in Regent's Park on 16 June 1873, survived by his wife Caroline and their one daughter.

(Source of biography: G. Martin Murphy, 'Richards, William Upton (1811-1873)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23543, accessed 7 June 2005])

This collection consists of two letters, dated 14 August and 18 August 1851, from Richards to W. Gresley, author of The Ordinance of Confession (1851). In the letters, Richards praises Gresley's "most valuable little book . on Confession" and offers suggestions for improving it.