Richard Rigby

The Right Honourable Richard Rigby
Chief Secretary for Ireland
In office 1757–1761
Preceded by	Henry Seymour Conway
Succeeded by	William Gerard Hamilton

Richard Rigby PC (February 1722 – 8 April 1788), was an English civil servant and politician. He served as Chief Secretary for Ireland and Paymaster of the Forces. Rigby accumulated a fortune serving the Crown and politician wheeler-dealers in the dynamic 18th century parliament, and this money eventually ended up endowing the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Rigby family took Mistley Hall in Essex as the site of their manor, but was descended from the Rigby of Burgh family. Rigby's father and immediate ancestors made a fortune as merchant drapers in the City of London, as merchants and colonial officers in the West Indies, and as speculators in the South Sea Bubble. Richard Rigby's father also had the same name, and was significant in the history of Jamaica, serving as its Secretary, the Provost Marshal, and a member of the Royal Assembly in the late 17th and early 18th century.

He was also part-owner of a plantation in Antigua and a slave trader. His elder brother James also served as a colonial officer on the island. Richard and James Rigby were sons of Edward Rigby of Mistley Hall, a London draper and landowner based in Covent Garden, and Anne Hyde, a close cousin of Queen Anne (Hyde), Queen Anne, Queen Mary, and the Earl of Clarendon. Edward and Ann had a London town house in the parish of St Andrews High Holborn. Rigby was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the Middle Temple.

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