Henry Richard

Rev. Henry Richard MP (3 April 1812 – 20 August 1888), "the Apostle of Peace", was a Congregational minister and Welsh Member of Parliament, 1868-88. The son of the Rev. Ebenezer Richard (1781–1837), a Calvinistic Methodist minister, Henry Richard is chiefly known as an advocate of peace and international arbitration, having been secretary of the Peace Society for forty years (1848–84). He is less widely known for his other interests, for example his anti-slavery work.

Born in 1812 in Tregaron, Ceredigion, and educated initially at Llangeitho grammar school, Henry Richard attended college at Highbury, near London, to obtain qualifications for the ministry. In 1835 he was appointed the second in a line of distinguished pastors at Marlborough Chapel, a Congregational chapel in the Old Kent Road, London, whose foundation stone had been laid by Thomas Wilson in 1826. Here Henry Richard succeeded the Rev. Thomas Hughes, and raised sufficient funds to pay off the chapel's outstanding building loans and establish a flourishing school (British School, Oakley Place).

Rev. Henry Richard resigned in 1850 to devote himself full-time as secretary to the Peace Society, a post he had undertaken two years earlier on a part-time basis. He helped organize a series of congresses in the capitals of Europe, and was partly instrumental in securing the insertion of a declaration in favour of arbitration in the treaty of Paris in 1856. Through this work he became universally known in Europe and the United States until his resignation in 1885.

During the early 1860s, Henry Richard became a leading figure in the Liberation Society, whose main aim was the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. The Society increasingly focused its attentions on Richard's native Wales and sought to contest parliamentary elections. At the 1865 General Election 1865, Richard announced his intention to contest Cardiganshire but withdrew in view of the opposition of the Liberal elite in the county.

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