What's the meaning of the phrase 'Good riddance'?

An expression of pleasure on being rid of some annoyance

- usually an individual.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Good riddance'?
'Riddance' is now so completely associated with this little
phrase that it is rarely, if ever, seen out alone. The only sort
of riddance on offer these days is a good one. It wasn't
always thus. In the 16th century a riddance was a general-
purpose noun and meant 'deliverance from' or 'getting rid
of'. The first adjectives to be linked with the word were
fayre/happy/gladsome and, in Shakespeare's Merchant of
Venice, 1600, Portia wishes the Prince of Morocco 'a gentle
riddance'.
A very early use of riddance comes in John Rastell's
poem, Away Mourning, circa 1525:

I haue her lost,

For all my cost,
Yet for all that I trowe
I haue perchaunce,
A fayre ryddaunce,
And am quyt of a shrew.
 Shakespeare appears to be
the coiner of 'good riddance', in Troilus and Cressida, 1606:

Thersites: I will see you hanged, like clotpoles,

ere I come any more to your tents: I will keep
where there is wit stirring and leave the faction
of fools.
[Exits]
Patroclus: A good riddance.
The phrase is often extended and emphasized as 'good
riddance to bad rubbish' or, as that extended form was first
coined, 'good riddance of bad rubbish'. Tobias Smollett
used the phrase in a none too friendly comment, in The
Critical Review, 1805:
 But we are sorry ... to consider Mr. Pratt's
writings as 'purely evil' ... we should really look
upon this author's departure from the world of
literature as a good riddance of bad rubbish.

The American journalist and member

of President Andrew Jackson's 'Kitchen Cabinet', Francis
Preston Blair, wrote an editorial in The Extra Globe, 1841.
In this he appears to have been the first to use the precise
version of the phrase that is most commonly used now:

[Following the withdrawal of members of a

rival advisory group] From the bottom of our
hearts we are disposed to exclaim "Good
riddance to bad rubbish."