Richard Harrison was born in October 1646, the son of John Harrison and Mary Shotbolt. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and the Middle Temple, serving as JP for Hertfordshire from 1670 to 1688. On 28 April 1668 he married the Honourable Audrey Villiers, daughter of George Villiers, 4th Viscount Grandison of Limerick and Lady Mary Leigh. Their son Edward, born in 1674, was the father of Audrey, who married Charles, later 3rd Viscount Townshend, in 1723.

Harrison succeeded to an estate of £1600 a year on his father’s death in 1669. He unfortunately also inherited a debt of £6000 to the Crown, which forced him to seek political and military office in order to secure immunity from arrest. In October 1669 he was elected MP for Lancaster and again in 1679. His father-in-law enrolled him in the Gentleman Pensioners, of which he was captain, to secure protection for Harrison during parliamentary recesses. Harrison was an inactive MP; he was nominally registered as a court supporter but took no part in the Exclusion Parliament. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 he refused to swear the Oath of Allegiance and consequently spent the rest of his long life in retirement.

Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745) was a pupil of John Riley (1646–1691) and after Kneller’s death in 1723 was described by George Vertue as one of the three leading portrait painters of the day, along with Michael Dahl and Charles Jervas.¹ His portraits of men have a sombre, fleshy quality, of which this is a typical example. It probably entered the Townshend collection along with a large number of other Harrison family portraits when Audrey Harrison inherited Balls Park. Most of the other Harrison portraits were sold in 1904 at the Townshend Heirlooms sale.