Background and career
Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer and pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French and American Revolutions. He was well-connected and fostered communication between many people, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Mirabeau and the Marquis de Condorcet. According to the historian John Davies, Price was "the greatest Welsh thinker of all time". Born in Llangeinor, near Bridgend, Wales, Price spent most of his adult life as minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church, then on the outskirts of London. He edited, published and developed the Bayes–Price theorem and the field of actuarial science. He also wrote on issues of demography and finance, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Born on 23 February 1723, Richard Price was the son of Rhys Price, a dissenting minister. His mother was Catherine Richards, his father's second wife. Richard was born at Tyn Ton, a farmhouse in the village of Llangeinor, Glamorgan. He was educated privately, then at Neath and Pen-twyn. He studied under Vavasor Griffiths at Chancefield, Talgarth, Powys. He then moved to London, where he spent the rest of his life. He studied with John Eames and the dissenting academy in Moorfields, London. Leaving the academy in 1744, Price became chaplain and companion to George Streatfield at Stoke Newington, then a village just north of London. He also held the lectureship at Old Jewry, where Samuel Chandler was minister. Streatfield's death and that of an uncle in 1757 improved Price's circumstances, and on 16 June 1757 he married Sarah Blundell, originally of Belgrave in Leicestershire.
In 1758, Price moved to Newington Green, and took up residence in No. 54 the Green, in the middle of a terrace that was even then a hundred years old. (The building still survives as London's oldest brick terrace, dated 1658.) Price became minister to the Newington Green meeting-house, a church that continues today as Newington Green Unitarian Church. Among the congregation were Samuel Vaughan and his family. Price had Thomas Amory as preaching colleague from 1770. When, in 1770, Price became morning preacher at the Gravel Pit Chapel in Hackney, he continued his afternoon sermons at Newington Green. He also accepted duties at the meeting house in Old Jewry.
A close friend of Price was Thomas Rogers, father of Samuel Rogers, a merchant turned banker who had married into a long-established Dissenting family and lived at No. 56 the Green. More than once, Price and the elder Rogers rode on horseback to Wales. Another was the Rev. James Burgh, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the Green in 1750 and sent his pupils to Price's sermons. Price, Rogers, and Burgh formed a dining club, eating at each other's houses in rotation. Price and Rogers joined the Society for Constitutional Information.
The "Bowood circle" was a group of liberal intellectuals around Lord Shelburne, and named after Bowood House, his seat in Wiltshire. Price met Shelburne in or shortly after 1767, or was introduced by his wife Elizabeth Montagu, a leader of the Blue Stocking intellectual women, after the publication of his Four Dissertations in that year. In 1771, Price had Shelburne employ Thomas Jervis. Another member of the circle was Benjamin Vaughan. In 1772, Price recruited Joseph Priestley, who came to work for Shelburne as librarian from 1773.
The group that Benjamin Franklin christened the "Club of Honest Whigs" was an informal dining group around John Canton. It met originally in St Paul's Churchyard, at the London Coffee House; in 1771 it moved to Ludgate Hill. Price and Sir John Pringle were members, as were Priestley and Benjamin Vaughan.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
