702). He held the prebend of Pole at Crediton till 1410, and in 1399 he obtained the prebend of St. Stephen, Beverley. He was one of the English commissioners to negotiate with France on 28 April 1403, and was employed in negotiations with the French and Flemings during the greater part of this and the following two years. The French and English representatives could not agree on the basis for negotiations, and in October 1404 Rishton crossed over to England to lay the matter before the king at Coventry. On 12 Nov. he and his colleagues had fresh instructions for treating with France and Flanders (ib. viii. 301, 327, 344, 375–7; Hingeston, p. 404; Nicolas, Proc. Privy Council, ii. 240–2). Rishton returned to Calais on 5 Dec., and the negotiations proceeded through the spring without much result. At the end of 1408 he went with Sir John Colvil and John Polton on a mission to Pope Gregory, and appears to have been present as one of the English representatives at Pisa. Rishton had papal graces sub expectatione in 1406 for prebends at York, Salisbury, and Lincoln. He was prebendary of Nether Avon, Salisbury, from 4 June 1408 till his death in June 1413. In 1404 he is described as doctor utriusque juris and auditor of causes in the holy apostolic palace. A number of letters written by Rishton and his colleagues in connection with his missions in 1403–4 are printed in Hingeston's ‘Royal and Historical Letters during the Reign of Henry IV’ (cf. pp. ciii–cx). For seven of the letters Rishton is solely responsible. Rishton also wrote some sermons, and a treatise ‘De tollendo Schismate,’ which Leland says was formerly in the library at Westminster Abbey (Collectanea, iii. 48). There was another Nicholas Rishton, who was rector of St. Dionys Backchurch in 1430 (Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 330), and who may be the person of that name who had a grace to incept in canon law at Oxford on 25 Jan. 1443.
[Rymer's Fœdera, orig. edit.; Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council; Hingeston's Royal and Historical Letters, Henry IV (Rolls Ser.); Wylie's Hist. of England under Henry IV, i. 471–2, ii. 79, iii. 369 (see note 8 for further authorities), and 373; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 635.]
RISING, JOHN (1756–1815), portrait and subject painter, had a large practice in London, and was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1785 until his death. Among many distinguished persons who sat to him were William Wilberforce, Lord Melville, Lord Nelson, Sir William Blackstone, Arthur Young, and Robert Bloomfield. His portraits are pleasing in colour, and executed with great truth and vigour; many of them have been engraved. Rising also painted various fancy and domestic subjects, such as ‘Juvenile Employment,’ ‘Ballad Singers,’ the ‘Sentimental Shepherd,’ and the ‘Infant Narcissus,’ some of which were mezzotinted by W. Ward, J. Jones, and others. His portrait of Blackstone is in the Bodleian Library, that of the first Marquis of Downshire at Hatfield, and that of Wilberforce in the possession of the Earl of Crawford. Rising is said to have at one time assisted Sir Joshua Reynolds with the backgrounds of his pictures. He died in 1815, aged 59.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Seguier's Dict. of Painters; Cat. of National Portrait Exhibition, 1867; Royal Academy Catalogues; list of members of the Artists' Annuity Fund.]
RISLEY, THOMAS (1630–1716), nonconformist divine, was born on 27 Aug. 1630 at Newton-in-Makerfield, and baptised on 20 Sept. at Newchurch chapel, both places being then in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire. He was the second son of Thomas Risley (d. 1670), by his wife Thomasin (d. 1681), daughter of Henry Lathom of Whiston in the parish of Prescot, Lancashire. From Warrington grammar school he went in 1649 to Pembroke College, Oxford, matriculated on 9 Dec. 1650, and graduated B.A. 12 Oct. 1652, M.A. 15 June 1655. In 1654 he was elected fellow, and was confirmed in his fellowship on 20 June 1661 by the commissioners for visiting the university after the Restoration. He surrendered his fellowship on 24 Aug. 1662, being unwilling to comply with the terms of the Uniformity Act. On 10 Nov. 1662 he was ordained deacon and presbyter by Edward Reynolds [q. v.], bishop of Norwich, but his principles, which were of the Ussher school, debarred him from preferment. Having an estate at Culcheth (otherwise Risley) in the parish of Winwick, he settled there, preached privately to his neighbours, studied physic, and practised gratuitously. In 1666 he declined an invitation to return to Oxford, and, having formed a regular congregation after the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689, he built at his own cost a small chapel, still standing, and known as Risley Chapel, of which the site in Fifty Croft, Cross Lane, Culcheth, was vested in trustees on 25 March 1707 for a ministry ‘holding and owning the doctrinal articles’ of the church of England. Like many of the older nonconformist chapels in the north of England, it has a bell. Here he continued to preach till his death. At first he wrote sermons, but for many
