Nicholas Ridley, was born in the county of Northumberland, near the Scottish border, early in the sixteenth century, but the exact date has not been preserved. He was educated at Newcastle-on-Tyne and Pembroke College, Cambridge, of which he was elected Fellow in 1524, went to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne in 1527, returned to England in 1530, was chaplain to the University, and public orator in 1534, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer in 1537, Master of Pembroke, D.D. and chaplain to Henry VIII. in 1540, Prebendary of Canterbury in 1541, and of Westminster in 1545, Bishop of Rochester in 1547, and was translated to London in 1550. He was nominated for the bishopric of Durham in 1553, but soon after the accession of Mary was committed to the Tower, and was sent to Oxford, where he held numerous disputations, and one in particular of which a record remains, Tuesday, April 16, 1555. He was condemned as a heretic Tuesday, Oct. 1, 1555, degraded Tuesday, Oct. 15, and suffered at the stake with Bishop Latimer, Wednesday, Oct. 16.
He was a man right comely and well proportioned in all points, both in complexion and lineaments of the body. He took all things in good part, bearing no malice nor rancour from his heart, but straightways forgetting all injuries and offences done against him. He was very kind and affectionate to his kinsfolk, and yet not bearing with them anything otherwise than right would require, giving them always for a general rule, yea, to his own brother and sister, that they doing evil should seek or look for nothing at his hand, but should be as strangers and aliens to him; and that they were his brother and sister, who lived honestly, and a godly life. Using all kinds of ways to mortify himself, he was given to much prayer and contemplation.
| Rome thundered death; but Ridley’s dauntless eye | |
| Stared in Death’s face, and scorned Death standing bye. | |
| In spite of Rome, for England’s faith he stood; | |
| And in the flames he sealed it with his blood. |
Bonner had made an ill retribution to Ridley, for the kindness he had shewed his friends when he was in possession at London: for he had made Bonner’s mother always dine with him, when he lived in his country-house of Fulham, and treated her as if she had been his own mother; besides his kindness to his other friends. Heath, then bishop of Worcester, had been kept prisoner a year and a half in Ridley’s house, where he lived as if he had been at his own; and Heath used always to call him the best learned of all the party: yet he so far forgot gratitude and humanity, that though he went through Oxford when he was a prisoner there, he came not to see him.
| How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled! | |
| See Latimer and Ridley in the might | |
| Of Faith stand coupled for a common flight! | |
| One (like those prophets whom God sent of old) | |
| Transfigured, from this kindling hath foretold | |
| A torch of inextinguishable light; | |
| The Other gains a confidence as bold; | |
| And thus they foil their enemy’s despite. | |
| The penal instruments, the shows of crime, | |
| Are glorified while this once-mitred pair | |
| Of saintly Friends the “murtherer’s chain partake, | |
| Corded, and burning at the social stake:” | |
| Earth never witnessed object more sublime | |
| In constancy, in fellowship more fair! |
In every relation of life, the power of his intellect, the integrity of his principles, and the piety of his heart were conspicuous.
The few tracts of Ridley’s that remain are less eloquent than learned.
Ridley always knew what he meant, and had the moral courage to say it, and to act upon it, but he would have been a most dangerous man in Cranmer’s position; the National Church would probably have become a sect, like the many which arose and flourished on the Continent.
