NASH, RICHARD (1674-1762), English dandy, better known as "Beau Nash," was born at Swansea on Oct. 18, He was educated at Carmarthen grammar school and at Jesus college, Oxford. He obtained a commission in the army, which however, he soon exchanged for the study of law at the Temple. Here among "wits and men of pleasure" he came to be accepted as an authority in regard to dress, manners and style. When the members of the Inns of Court entertained William III. after his accession, Nash conducted the pageant at the Middle Temple. He was offered knighthood, but he declined the honour, unless accompanied by a pension. The pension was not given and Nash turned gamester. In 1705 he succeeded Captain Webster as master of the ceremonies at Bath. Under his regime Bath became the leading fashionable watering-place. He drew up a new code of rules for the regulation of balls and assemblies, abolished the habit of wearing swords in places of public amusement and brought duelling into disrepute, induced gentlemen to adopt shoes and stockings in parades and assemblies instead of boots, reduced re fractory chairmen to submission and civility, and introduced a tariff for lodgings. Through his exertions a handsome assembly
room was also erected, and the streets and public buildings were greatly improved. Nash adopted an outward state corresponding to his nominal dignity. He wore an immense white hat as a sign of office, and a dress adorned with rich embroidery, and drove in a chariot with six greys, laced lackeys and French horns. When the act of parliament against gambling was passed in 1745, he was deprived of an easy though uncertain means of subsistence, but the corporation afterwards granted him a pension of six score guineas a year, which, with the sale of his snuff-boxes and other trinkets, enabled him to support a certain faded splendour till his death on Feb. 3, I 762. He was honoured with a public funeral at the expense of the town. He was a man of strong personality, and considerably more able than Beau Brummel, whose prototype he was.