Richard Kingston (writer)

Richard Kingston (1635? – 1710?) was an English political pamphleteer, clerical impostor, and spy.

He was born about 1635. According to his own statements he was a M.A., and was ordained by the Bishop of Galloway, 17 July 1662, at Westminster; and on 6 February 1682 was made chaplain in ordinary to Charles II. But Matthew Smith in 1700, when engaged with Kingston in a political controversy, charged him with having forged his letters of orders.Jonathan Trelawny in the 1680s, and Thomas Tenison in the 1690s, had become aware that Kingston was an impostor. He ceased to wear clerical dress. When Kingston published on the subject in 1700, he made an unconvincing case. He was son of a Northamptonshire farmer, who became a tailor's apprentice.

In 1665, Kingston was minister at St. James's, Clerkenwell, and worked during the Great Plague; Trelwany believed he was then a tailor, had found sermons, and preached in the absence of the incumbent. He had resigned this preferment before 17 September 1666, and took up a living at Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, appointed by Nicholas Knollys who called himself 3rd Earl of Banbury. In 1678, he received the living of Henbury in Gloucestershire, possibly by purchasing the right himself. He asserted that a prebend and a rectory were added to Henbury. He remained there, on a small estate, till the Glorious Revolution, when he sold his property and moved to London.

For a period Kingston spied in London for the Jacobites. In 1692, he was discovered by the government agent John Macky, and was turned to spy for the other side. By the second half of the 1690s, he was working for Sir William Trumbull, and in the end his cover was blown when he testified in treason trials. He had a pension to write for the government, but it fell into arrears and he descended into poverty. A petition from him dated 1699 states that £600 was due to him.

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