During the first two decades of his career, Richardson's role as printer was hardly limited to setting the type for the periodicals that were issued from his shop. Perhaps the most glaring evidence of his intervention in producing text is the fact that both The True Briton and The Weekly Miscellany just happen to have letters supposedly from women who protested the legal restraints against their participation in the public sphere. Neither the Duke of Wharton, the owner of The True Briton, nor William Webster, the desperately impecunious producer of The Weekly Miscellany, launched their journals with the objective of advancing radical views about political equality for women. But almost inadvertently, this middle-aged, rotund printer at Salisbury Court was quietly feminizing journalism.

As an outlier in what was perceived to be a corrupt, predatory political world, Richardson readily assumed a female role as victim and the subversive strategy of passive resistance. The Non-juror TB females voiced dilemmas over being required to swear oaths of loyalty to a government that their consciences could not support:

This oath of obedience to government authority also includes the dilemma concerning marriage vows and the legal dominance of husbands over wives, as Sarah Chapone argues: