RICCARD, Andrew (1604-72), of Mark Lane, London.

The son of a Dorset yeoman, Riccard was apprenticed to John Watkin, a Draper with substantial trading interests in the Merchant Adventurers’, Levant, East India and Muscovy Companies. After ten years’ service, in 1637 he was made free of the Drapers’ Company and thereafter he also joined his master’s four trading companies.19Soc. Gen., Boyd’s Inhabitants 10101; J.E. Farnell, ‘The Politics of the City of London, 1649-57’ (Chicago Univ. PhD thesis, 1963), 213-4. In 1640 Riccard extended his commercial network further by marrying the daughter of the wealthy London merchant, Robert Bateman, with a marriage portion of £1,500.20PROB11/193/488. Perhaps because of his father-in-law’s position as chamberlain of London, Riccard took an interest in City affairs and opposed the attacks on the traditional powers of the lord mayor and aldermen in the early 1640s. In July 1641 he signed a petition upholding the lord mayor’s right to elect one of the sheriffs, and in February 1642 he joined other merchants, including three members of the Bateman family, in signing a petition protesting about the proposal to give the City’s new committee of safety control over the London militia. The latter had distinctly royalist overtones, but the House of Commons chose to conciliate the merchants, punishing only two of them: Sir George Benion and the recorder, Sir Thomas Gardiner*.21Pearl, London, 120, 149. Riccard’s main concern, however, was trade. During 1643 he worked with (Sir) Thomas Soame* to persuade the Commons to permit them to land a consignment of currants, despite an act prohibiting their importation.22CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 232. By the mid-1640s Riccard was one of London's leading merchants, and the owner of several ships trading with the East Indies, and he was elected for the fourth joint stock committee for that Company in August 1647.23Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1644-9, pp. 157, 221. Riccard played no part in City politics during the mid-1640s, and his first appointment to public office was not until April 1648 when he was nominated as a commissioner for the City assessment arrears.24A. and O. In July of that year he resigned from the committee of the East India Company.25Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1644-9, p. 276. This unusual move may have been politically motivated. There is no doubt that Riccard was associating with royalist around this time. He was feoffee in trust for an estate belonging to his fellow East India and Levant merchant, William Garway, and in 1649 he took as apprentice the son of the great pre-war customs farmer, Sir John Wolstenholme.26Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1644-9, p. 323; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 375n; Farnell, ‘Politics of London’, 213-4. With the commonwealth a fait accompli, Riccard returned to the East India Company committee in July 1649.27Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1644-9, p. 332.

Riccard was elected both alderman for Vintry Ward and sheriff in September 1651.28Beaven, Aldermen of London i. 211; ii. pp. lxiii, 74. He and the other sheriff-elect, John Ireton*, offered to serve without pay if their fee farm rents were paid, although it is not clear if Riccard shared Ireton’s ulterior motive of furthering the common council’s cause in their dispute with the court of aldermen over the arrangements for paying officials.29CLRO, Jor. 41x, f. 74; Farnell, ‘Politics of London’, 159. Riccard had served as treasurer of the Levant Company since 1650, and in May 1652 he fronted a petition of the Company to the council of state, complaining of those who traded with the Middle East without licence.30CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 271-2. In February 1653 Riccard requested his discharge from the court of aldermen, probably to enable him to devote more time to his business interests, and as he ‘hath undergone the office and charge of shrievalty’, he was discharged without fine.31CLRO, Rep. 62, f. 247v. He was appointed deputy governor of the East India Company in July 1653; and in March 1654 he replaced Isaac Penington* as governor of the Levant Company.32Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1650-4, p. 240; Wood, Hist. Levant Co., 255.

In July 1654 Riccard was elected to the first protectorate Parliament as one of the London representatives, coming sixth in the poll.33Harl. 6810, f. 164v; HMC 6th Rep., 437. He was probably encouraged to stand as a counter-balance to more radical candidates such as Isaac Penington and Thomas Foot*. Before Parliament met, Riccard’s advice was sought by the lord protector on suitable persons to act as commissioners for Barbados, and in the early days of the session he was one of a group of merchants which suggested major changes to the running of the East India Company.34Bodl. Rawl. A.17, p. 247; Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1650-4, p. 340. His activity in the House was confined to appointments to committees concerned with trade and legal matters. On 15 September he was named to the committee to examine the powers of the judges at Salters’ Hall and on 5 October he was named to the committee to consider the bill limiting the jurisdiction of the court of Chancery.35CJ vii. 368a, 374a. On 6 October he was appointed to committees to consider ways of encouraging the transportation of corn, butter and cheese, and on 12 October he among those chosen to meet with the Greenland and Eastland merchants concerning the supply of whale oil and regulation of the fishing trade.36CJ vii. 374b, 375b.

After the dissolution of Parliament in January 1655, Riccard was frequently called upon to advise the protectoral council on trade matters, and he appears to have been a willing collaborator with the Cromwellian regime. During 1655 he acted as a mediator between the council and the East India Company concerning £85,000 damages paid to the Company at the end of the Dutch War, which had been paid only after great delay, and which the government immediately asked to borrow. In the meantime, Riccard and Sir Thomas Vyner were given custody of the money.37Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, pp. v, 28, 32; TSP iii. 515-6; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 256, 267, 273, 298. In June Riccard was among the deputies of the Levant Company who attended the Venetian resident to ask for protection against pirates in the eastern Mediterranean.38CSP Ven. 1655-6, pp. 63-4. On 12 July he was included on the council’s committee for trade and navigation, and this appointment was confirmed in November.39CSP Dom. 1655, p. 240; 1655-6, p.1. In the same month he was appointed to the committee to meet Menasseh Ben Israel to discuss the re-admission of the Jews to England.40CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 23. In March 1656 he was appointed one of the commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, working with the deputy major-general for London, John Barkstead*.41CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 238. Riccard was not re-elected for the second protectorate Parliament, but he continued to serve the state. He was named as an assessment commissioner in June 1657, attended the protector on behalf of the Levant Company in August, and at the end of the year he and Vyner lent £5,000 to the government.42A. and O.; CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 101; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 222. During 1657 and 1658 Riccard also negotiated with the Venetian resident in his capacity as governor of the Levant Company.43CSP Ven. 1657-9, pp. 125, 145, 173, 183, 222, 249-50, 272 In January 1659 he petitioned Richard Cromwell* for right to recover goods from the Aleppo Merchant, wrecked off Padstow in Cornwall, without paying customs and excise charges.44CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 265. Despite the obvious benefits to be derived from loyalty to the Cromwells, the extent of Riccard’s personal attachment to the protectorate is questioned by two entries in the parish registers for his home parish of St Olave’s. The first records the marriage of his daughter, Christian, to the pro-royalist merchant, John Gayer, in March 1656, which was conducted by John Ireton as JP, and afterwards solemnised privately by the ejected bishop of Exeter, Ralph Brownrigg. The second entry, from May 1658, records that when the grandson was baptised, Riccard was a ‘witness’, or godfather, and Dr Brownrigg was the officiant.45St Olave par. reg., 65, 273. Gayer did not live for much longer, and in February 1659 Christian married another husband with royalist leanings: Henry Rich, Lord Kensington, younger son of the 1st earl of Holland.46CP.

There is little evidence for Riccard’s involvement in public affairs during the restored Rump, although he continued his mercantile activities, and was re-elected as deputy governor of the East India Company in July 1659.47CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 385; Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, pp. 324-5, 333-4. In the new year of 1660 he was appointed to the London assessment commission and was involved in a petition to the council of state for the rights of the Levant Company to be respected.48A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 417. Riccard welcomed the Restoration, and received a knighthood from Charles II in July 1660.49Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 229. He was elected governor of the East India Company in the same month, and although he initially begged ‘not to be pressed to undertake the charge’ as he was already governor of the Levant Company, he was soon prevailed upon to do so.50Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1660-3, pp.v, 22. During the early 1660s Riccard diversified his trading interests still further by investing substantial sums in the Royal African Company when it was granted a new charter in 1663.51K.G. Davies, Royal Africa Co. (1957), 64. In the same period he engaged in a feud with the earl of Winchilsea over the activities of the Levant Company, with the earl being told in April 1662 ‘that your excellency hath not a greater enemy in England than the governor’, although the two men settled their differences soon afterwards.52CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 314-15; HMC Finch i. 171, 185, 189, 227, 250, 307, 454. Riccard was the East India Company’s chief spokesman in their protracted dispute with the merchant, Thomas Skinner, and when the case developed into a struggle over privilege between the Lords and Commons in 1667-8, Riccard was brought before the upper House as a delinquent.53Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1660-3, pp. 245-7, 255, 268, 276-7; HMC 8th Rep. pt. i. 107, 165-7; Pepys’s Diary ix. 184, 192-3 His humble apology, however, secured his release in May 1668.54CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 382; HMC 8th Rep. pt. i. 173-4.

Riccard died a rich man on 6 September 1672 and was buried at St Olave’s church eleven days later.55Povah, Annals of St Olave, 191; St Olave par. reg., 212. In his will he estimated that his estate, which included lands in Dorset and a share in a plantation in Barbados, was worth over £40,000. The bulk of his money was divided among his family, with bequests to the poor of St Olave’s, St Thomas’s Hospital, and charities associated with the Drapers’ Company and the East India Company. The Levant Company, out of ‘gratitude and respect’, later erected a life-size monument of Riccard in the dress of a Roman senator in St. Olave’s church, exalting him as

a man of outstanding piety towards God, uncommon honesty towards his fellows, enjoying the highest reputation with all. Of untiring devotion in the transaction of public business, in the employment of any of his gifts he displayed alike the highest prudence and integrity.56London and Mdx. Arch. Soc. Trans. n.s. ii. 233; Smyth's Obit., 96.

He was succeeded by his only surviving daughter, Christian, who had by this time acquired a third husband, John Berkeley*, created Lord Berkeley of Stratton by Charles II.57CP.