Richard Romney Sedgwick (29 May 1894 – 20 January 1972) was a British historian, civil servant and diplomat.^[1] He was the elder son of Professor Adam Sedgwick, 1854–1913, the zoologist, and Laura Helen Elizabeth Robinson, the daughter of Captain Robinson, of Armagh.^[2][3] He married Mana St David Hodson, daughter of Professor T.C.Hodson, in 1936.^[4][5] They had one son, Adam, and one daughter, Sophie.^[6]

Sedgwick was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the college in 1919.^[7]

Sedgwick edited The History of Parliament volumes that covered the House of Commons during the years 1715–1754.^[8] His work and that of his collaborators demonstrated that the Whig and Tory parties survived Queen Anne's death in 1714 and continued to exist during the reigns of George I and George II.^[9]

Eveline Cruickshanks, in her work on the Tories and the Jacobite rising of 1745, paid tribute to Sedgwick: "My greatest debt is to the late Romney Sedgwick, a staunch Whig, whose wit and erudition I greatly admired, for a series of discussions, heated at times, but, as I well know, much enjoyed on both sides".^[10]