last. In 1778 he opposed the motion for a public funeral to Chatham, and in May 1783 he vigorously defended Powell and Bembridge, the two pay-office officials who were accused of malversation. For some years he had been politically extinct, but he continued to hold his lucrative post of paymaster until the fall of the coalition in 1784, when he was succeeded in office by Edmund Burke, and (to his apparent surprise) called upon by the attorney-general to pay into the exchequer certain large balances of public money remaining in his hands (May 1784). According to Wraxall, Rigby only extricated himself from an impeachment by striking a bargain with the nabob, Sir Thomas Rumbold [q. v.], whose daughter Frances married his nephew Francis: Rigby engaging to procure the stoppage of the Bill of Pains and Penalties against Rumbold, while the latter undertook to provide the funds necessary to save Rigby from public exposure. Although Rigby certainly spoke against the Bill of Pains and Penalties in the house, there seems to be no direct evidence for this allegation.
About 1785 Rigby, who suffered greatly from gout, gave up his house in St. James's Place and retired, by Sir William Fordyce's orders, to Bath. There he died on 8 April 1788, and was buried at Mistley, leaving, it was said, ‘near half a million of public money.’ A contemporary life stated that, though Rigby never married, ‘nor indeed was ever known to have expressed any violent inclination for the bonds of wedlock, he was fond of the society of women, and, by his gallantry and attention, made a tender impression upon some of the proudest female hearts in either Great Britain or Ireland.’ By his will he left 5,000l. to a natural daughter, Sarah Lucas, 1,000l. to her mother, a native of Ipswich, and an annuity of 100l. to Jenny Pickard of Colchester. His chief heir and residuary legatee was his nephew Francis Hale-Rigby, the son of his sister Martha, who married Francis Hale (Stowe MS. 781, f. 132; Will, dated 31 Dec. 1781, proved 19 May 1788).
Sir G. O. Trevelyan wrote of Rigby, that the only virtue he possessed was that he drank fair (C. J. Fox, chap. iii.). An unblushing placeman during the worst period of parliamentary corruption, his undoubted talent for addressing a popular assembly was sustained by a confidence that nothing could abash. His education was defective, but he was ready in rough retort, and Cowper relates a characteristic altercation in which Rigby undertook to teach the rudiments of English to Beckford (a notoriously incorrect speaker) who had ventured to correct his Latin. Wraxall depicts with nice discrimination Rigby's behaviour in the House of Commons. ‘When in his place he was invariably habited in a full-dressed suit of clothes, commonly of a purple or dark colour, without lace or embroidery, close buttoned, with his sword thrust through the pocket. His countenance was very expressive, but not of a genius; still less did it indicate timidity or modesty; all the comforts of the pay office seemed to be eloquently depictured in it. His manner, rough yet frank, bold but manly, admirably set off whatever sentiments he uttered in parliament. … Whatever he meant he expressed, indeed, without circumlocution or declamation. There was a happy audacity about his forehead which must have been the gift of nature; art could not obtain it by any efforts. He seemed neither to fear nor even to respect the House, whose composition he well knew, and to the members of which assembly he never appeared to give credit for any portion of virtue, patriotism, or public spirit. Far from concealing these sentiments, he insinuated, or even pronounced them without disguise, and from his lips they neither excited surprise nor even commonly awakened reprehension.’ In 1844, in the pages of ‘Coningsby,’ Disraeli bestowed the name of Rigby on his ideal type of corrupt wire-puller and political parasite. [See also under Croker, John Wilson.]
A portrait was engraved by Sayer in 1782.
[Morant's Essex, i. 460, 462; Wraxall's Hist. Memoirs, passim; Bedford Corresp. freq.; Grenville Papers, passim; Walpole's Memoirs of George III, ed. Barker, and Correspondence, ed. Cunningham, passim; History of White's Club, i. 145–6; Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, iii. 76; Collins's Peerage (1779), 436; Authentick Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Richard Rigby, 1788; Town and Country Mag. 1788, pp. 209, 272; Forster's Life of Goldsmith, ii. 66; Grego's Hist. of Parliamentary Elections, p. 192; Georgian Era, i. 543; Trevelyan's Early Hist. of Charles James Fox, passim; Wheatley and Cunningham's London, ii. 253, 296; Stephens's Cat. of Satirical Prints in Brit. Mus. vol. iv. Nos. 4210, 4272, 4422; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 203, 264, 349.]
RIGG or RIGGE, AMBROSE (1635?–1705), quaker, born at Brampton in Westmoreland about 1635, was educated at the free school, where he received religious impressions. About 1653, upon hearing George Fox preach, he became a quaker, and his parents renouncing him, he travelled at Easter 1655 on foot to London, preaching as he went. From London, he and his companion Thomas Robertson went to Rochester, where they were apprehended at a baptist meeting and sent to prison. After visiting other places in Kent, Rigg proceeded alone to Bristol, where he again met Robertson in the prison. In spite
