Huw Edwards delivers his tribute to Dr Richard Price

HUW Edwards honoured a “great thinker” on Wednesday as he unveiled a blue plaque dedicated to a Welsh mathematician who helped shape the US constitution.

Dr Richard Price, who was also a philosopher and a Nonconformist minister, had lived at 43 Newington Green between 1758 and 1787.

Here, he studied and wrote letters to the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson – imparting his definition of liberty.

“Richard Price is scandalously little known, not just in Wales, where the scandal is even greater, but further afield,” said BBC newsreader Mr Edwards. “He seems to be a bigger name in the United States than he is in the United Kingdom.

“Today, for me, is a very big step in righting the balance, because anyone who’s interested in the pattern of developing ideas, thinking about how communities work, how society should function, and how we should govern ourselves is missing a big piece of the jigsaw if they don’t acknowledge the contribution of Dr Richard Price.”

Mr Edwards’ pulls the curtain on the plaque for Dr Price, pictured below

A radical supporter of human rights and equality, Dr Price defended the French Revolution, and supported the women’s rights movement of the time. Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist and writer, was a member of the polymath’s congregation at the Newington Green Unitarian Church.

Mr Edwards, the BBC’s News At Ten presenter, said: “The principled stand he took in terms of understanding the role of women in society and realising that no civilised society could pursue a policy of not acknowledging the rights of every woman as well as every man.

“At that time, there were people who thought he was crazy for saying that. Today, hopefully, there’s no one here who thinks we’re crazy for saying any such thing.”

He added: “His belief in liberty was expressed at a time when he was considered to be a bit of an eccentric. That’s a polite word to use.

“Others such as Edmund Burke, with a rather different view of how society should be run, have rather ruder words to say about Price, but then I have even ruder words to say about Edmund Burke, which I won’t use today.

Nicola Bennettsm a distant descendant

“For us in Wales, and for me as a London-Welshman, today’s a very proud moment. And there are thousands of London-Welsh people who will be part of the feeling of pride today. But, and it’s a very big but, Richard Price is a global figure. He is someone whose thoughts and teachings are as valid today as they were 300 or 200 years ago.”

Nicola Bennetts, a distant descendant of Dr Price, was at the unveiling and offered a different perspective on the man.

“He was remarkable as a public figure, polymath, a radical, a mathema­tician, and all sorts of things,” she said.

“But for his family, he was a lot more than that. He was warm, kind, and incredibly generous to his family. And he had a great sense of fun, too. “Can you imagine him on one leg hopping across a field? Because that’s my favourite story about him. Apparently, I think probably egged on by the Rogers children at number 56 [Newington Green], he challenged another man to a hopping race across the Cowslip Meadow, which in those days lay behind the Meeting House

“And apparently this man, Mr Hudson, the Commissioner of Customs, was much taller than Richard Price, and more robust, but Price won the race. Obviously to lots of loud cheers from the children next door.”

She added: “I’ve had messages from cousins, literally all over the world, from France, from Holland, Australia, Canada, the United States, even from Fiji. “All of these cousins join me in saying how delighted we are that Richard Price is being honoured and celebrated in this way,” she added.

No 54 Newington Green is a historical marvel in its own right. Dating from 1658, the building survived the Fire of London and is the oldest surviving terrace in the city.