Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Heath, Richard
HEATH, RICHARD (d. 1702), judge, son of Roger Heath, was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in July 1652, and called to the bar in November 1659. He may be the Mr. Heath mentioned by Pepys (Diary, i. 350) as attorney to the duchy of Lancaster in 1662. He became a bencher of his inn in October 1677, a serjeant-at-law in 1683, and when Sir Edward Atkyns became chief baron, he succeeded to the vacancy in the court of exchequer, 21 April 1686. He concurred with his colleagues in expressing an opinion in favour of the king's dispensing power, but did not altogether approve of the royal policy, as appears from Sancroft's statement on 6 Nov. 1688, that Heath alleged himself to have had instructions from the court to pronounce the bishop's petition a factious libel. James II superseded him in December, but he was excepted out of the Bill of Indemnity after the revolution, went into retirement, and died in July 1702. He married Katherine, daughter of Henry Weston of Ockham and Sende, sheriff of Surrey and Sussex.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges; 2 Shower's Reports, p. 459; State Trials, xii. 503; Statutes of the Realm, vi. 178; Parl. Hist. v. 334; Luttrell's Diary, i. 482, v. 198; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1501.]