Richard Budgen was christened at Frant Parish Church on the 29th May 1695, the son of Edward Budgen and Elizabeth nee May. Little is known of his early life other than he was part of a large family of ten children and his ancestry at Frant can be traced back to Thomas and Mary Budgen who married there in 1630.

In 1723 Richard Budgen published 24 maps as loose sheets that had been engraved by John Senex of Shropshire entitled "An Actual Survey of the County of Sussex divided into Rapes Hundreds and Deanryes. In which the exact longitude and atitude of all the remarkable places are determined from observation. Also an accurate deliniation by admeasurement of the sea-coast, roads and the rivers so far as navigable." The background to this remarkable set of maps is not clear but probably had been done by subscriptions from a prospectus. Throughout the period from 1724 to 1730 he produced a number of estate maps including Battle Abbey, Wilmington Manor and the manor of Udimore as well as the "Transcript of The Passage of the Hurricane from the Sea-side at Bexhill in Sussex to Newingden Level 20 May 1729 between nine and ten in the evening"

On 25th April 1727 he married Elizabeth Carpenter at St Michaels Parish Church, Withyham and in 1730 his only son Richard was born and then christened on 5th October at Frant. Within months at the early age of 36, in 1731 Richard Budgen died.

The descendents of Richard Budgen are themselves important cartographers. His son Richard Budgen (1730-1789) was an estate surveyor and produced many plans between 1757 and 1783 including "a sketch of the roads within fourteen miles of Tunbridge Wells" in 1774. His grandsons Thomas Budgen (1766-1832) practised in Lewes as a surveyor and published a plan of Brighthelmstone in 1788; and Charles Budgen (1769-1838) worked for the Ordnance Survey between 1798 and 1824. His great grandson John Budgen (b 1794) after serving in the navy acted as a surveyor from 1826 until 1840 in the Tunbridge Wells area.