Attributed to George Gower c.1540-1596

Richard Goodrich was the son of Richard Goodrich of Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire, and his wife, Alice, daughter of John Etton of Firsby.  He was also the nephew of Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely and one time Lord Chancellor.  He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and later became a member of Gray's Inn in 1532.  By 1535 he was serving as attorney of the Court of Augmentations.  He was returned as M.P. for Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire in 1542, perhaps through the patronage of the 4th Earl of Westmorland.  He was also returned as M.P. for the governments of 1545, and 1547.  On the accession of Edward VI he found great favour as a staunch Protestant in the service of the Crown.  He was one of the ecclesiastical commissioners, and worked for the codification of the ecclesiastical laws, the suppression of heresy, and the sale of chantry lands.  Under the reign of Mary I, a devout Catholic, his religious sympathies deprived him of further progress in this field, and in 1551 he was granted a compensatory annuity of £100.  His matrimonial troubles may also have contributed to this state of affairs since he found grounds to be divorced from his first wife, Mary, and then married Dorothy Blagge.  Mary later sued in the ecclesiastical courts for the restitution of her conjugal rights.  At the accession of Queen Elizabeth he was appointed to a committee to consider 'all things necessary for the Parliament' which was to sit in January 1559, and he served on various commissions involved with ecclesiastical affairs.  He died in May 1562 and was buried at St Andrew's Church, Holborn.  He was highly regarded as an administrator and as a lawyer, and his funeral was attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Keeper, the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, and the bishops of London and Ely, as well as 200 gentlemen from the inns of court.

His married firstly, Mary, daughter of John Blagge of London, whom he successfully divorced in 1552.  He married secondly, Dororthy, daughter of William Badby of Essex, widow of Sir George Blagge.