Richard Wayte was born in England in 1596. His name first appears upon the colonial records Aug. 28, 1634, when, at the age of thirty-eight, he was admitted to the church in Boston, his younger brother, Gamaliel, having been admitted in the previous year. It appears that he took the freeman's oath March 9, 1637, and that November 30 of the same year, in company with his brother Gamaliel, he was found guilty of too much sympathy with the religious views of Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, and by a judgment very suggestive of the church militant, was thereupon sentenced to be disarmed. This enforced retirement to the walks of peace was of brief duration, as in 1638 we find him an active member of the "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company." In 1640 he united with other residents of Mt. Wollaston in a petition for the formation of the town of Braintree. In 1647 he was sent as an officer with a message to the Narragansett Indians, and went on a similar errand in 1653. In 1654 we find him occupying the honorable and difficult position of marshal of the Massachusetts colony, a post which he seems to have filled to the satisfaction of the colonists for many years, and in which he was succeeded, as will be seen, by his son Return. In the same year (1654) he took an important part in an expedition against the Narragansett Indians. October 20, 1658, on account of services in the Pequot war and elsewhere, he received from the General Court a grant of 300 acres of land, "in the wilderness between Cochituate and Nipnop, 220 acres on a neck surrounded by Sudbury River, great pond, and small brook, five patches, 20 acres meadow, and 60 acres on northeast side Washakum Pond," all now included in Framingham, Mass., and a part of which is supposed to be now occupied by the Lake View Chautauqua Assembly, whose Hall of Philosophy stands on the summit of the elevation still known as "Mt. Waite." In 1659 Marshal Wayte was voted L5 from the public treasury in recognition of "his great and diligent pains, riding day and night, in summoning those entertaining Quakers to this court." October 16, 1660, his prowess was recognized by an appointment as "governor's guard (John Endicott at that time occupied this position) at all public meetings out of court."