Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Saltonstall, Richard (1586-1658)
SALTONSTALL, RICHARD (1586–1658), colonist, born near Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1586, was the son of Sir Peter Saltonstall (knighted in 1605) and nephew of Sir Richard Saltonstall [q. v.], lord mayor of London in 1597. A justice for the West Riding, and lord of the manor of Ledsham, near Leeds, he was knighted at Newmarket on 23 Nov. 1618. In 1629 he became a member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and in the same year was appointed an assistant. He, with his five children, was among those who in April 1630 sailed in company with John Winthrop in the Arbella, and landed at Salem on 12 June. In June 1632 he was desired by the council to make a map of Salem and Massachusetts Bay (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1632, p. 153).
Saltonstall left the colony on 30 March 1631, and did not again visit America. He continued, however, to take an interest in the affairs of New England, and more than once corresponded with leading men there on public matters. In 1631 he, in conjunction with Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, and others, obtained from the Earl of Warwick a grant of land on the Connecticut, under which was established the military settlement of Saybrook. In 1648 he was appointed a member of the parliamentary commission to try the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Hamilton, and Lord Capel for high treason. In 1651 he wrote to John Cotton and John Wilson a letter of remonstrance in regard to their persecution of quakers. Saltonstall died in 1658. He married Grace, daughter of Robert Keyes, and there are statements, unsupported by extant records, of two other marriages.
A son Richard (d. 1694) matriculated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 14 Dec. 1627, and was admitted a freeman of Massachusetts in October 1631. He befriended the regicides who escaped to New England in 1660, and protested against the importation of negro slaves. He spent his later years in England, and died at Hulme, Lancashire, on 29 April 1694. His son Nathaniel, born in America in 1639, was chosen a councillor under the charter of William and Mary, and in 1692 was appointed judge of the supreme court, but resigned rather than preside over the witchcraft trials. He died on 21 May 1707.
[Winthrop's Hist. of New England; Trumbull's Hist. of Connecticut; Savage's Genealogical Register of New England; Memoir of Sir R. Saltonstall in Massachusetts Historical Collection, 3rd ser. iv. 157; Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts, 1764, p. 15; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xi. 434, 513, xii. 354; Clutterbuck's Hist. of Hertfordshire, iii. 362; Miscellanea Geneal. et Herald. 3rd ser. i. 248; Appleton's Cyclop. of American Biography.]