Richard Cumberland (dramatist)
Richard Cumberland was an English dramatist and civil servant. In 1771 his hit play The West Indian was first staged. During the American War of Independence he acted as a secret negotiator with Spain in an effort to secure a peace agreement between the two nations. He also edited a short-lived critical journal called The London Review (1809). His plays are often remembered for their sympathetic depiction of characters generally considered to be on the margins of society.
Portrait by George Romney, c.1776
Commemorative red plaque on the site of Cumberland's former residence in Tunbridge Wells.
Image: Richard Cumberland playwright
Richard Bentley FRS was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellenism. In 1892, A. E. Housman called Bentley "the greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred".
Richard Bentley
Plaque on Bentley Square, Oulton
A bust of Bentley now stands in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge