RIDLEY, NICHOLAS (c. 1500-1555), English bishop and martyr, was the second son of Christopher Ridley of Unthank Hall, near Willemoteswick, Northumberland. He was sent about 1518 to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Having graduated M.A. in 1526 he went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Louvain, and on his return to Cambridge was appointed junior treasurer of his college. In 1534 he was one of the university proctors, and signed the decree of the university against the jurisdiction of the pope in England. Ridley was now chaplain to the university and began to show leanings to the reformed faith. In 1537 he became chaplain to Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, and in April 1538 vicar of Herne, Kent. In 1540 he was chosen master of Pembroke Hall; in 1541 he became chaplain to Henry VIII. and canon of Canterbury. In 1543 he was accused of heretical teaching and practices but acquitted, although just after his excul pation he finally abandoned the doctrine of transubstantiation.
In September 1547 Ridley was nominated bishop of Rochester. He was one of the visitors who were appointed to establish Pro testantism in the University of Cambridge; in 1548 helped to compile the English prayer book, and in 1549 was one of the commissioners who examined Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. He
concurred in their deprivation, and succeeded Bonner in the see of London. Having signed the letters patent settling the English crown on Lady Jane Grey, Ridley, in a sermon preached at St. Paul's cross on July 9th, 1553, affirmed that the princesses Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate, and that the succession of the former would be disastrous to the religious interests of England. When Lady Jane's cause was lost, however, he went to Fram lingham to ask Queen Mary's pardon, but was at once arrested and sent to the Tower of London. From his prison he wrote in defence of his religious opinions, and early in 15S4 he, with Cranmer and Latimer, was sent to Oxford to be examined. He defended him self against a number of divines, but was declared a heretic, and excommunicated. He refused to recant, and in Oct. 1555 he was tried for heresy under the new penal laws, being degraded and sentenced to death. With Cranmer and Latimer he met his end at the stake in Oxford on Oct. 16, 1555.
See Works of Nicholas Ridley D.D. (ed. H. Christmas, Parker Soc., 1841). His Life was written by Dr. Gloucester Ridley in 1763, and there is a memoir of him in Moule's edition of the bishops' Decla ration of the Lord's Supper (1895).