R I D 
was made to raise Lady Jane Grey to the throne, Bishop 
Ridley was induced heartily to concur in it by his attach¬ 
ment to the principles of the Reformation. Being com¬ 
manded by the council to preach at St. Paul’s, and to 
recommend Queen Jane to the people, he obeyed the order 
with great zeal and earnestness, pointing out the dangerous 
and ruinous consequences which must follow should the 
Princess Mary succeed, who was a rigid Papist, determined 
to subvert the true religion as already established, and to 
betray the kingdom again into slavery under a foreign power. 
After the design in favour of Lady Jane had miscarried, and 
the Princess Mary had been acknowledged and proclaimed 
Queen, Ridley went to Framingham, where Mary now was, 
to do her homage and to submit to her clemency. His 
reception, however, was such as he might have expected after 
what had passed at Hundsdon. By the command of that bi- 
gotted Princess he was sent back from Framingham on a lame 
horse, and committed to the Tower on the 26th of July, 
1553, to be proceeded against for heresy. Notwithstanding 
this treatment, the Bishop might have delivered himself from 
tiie danger which threatened him, and recovered the Queen's 
favour, if he would have brought the weight of his learning 
and authority to countenance her proceedings in religion. 
When he had been about eight months in the Tower, he 
was conveyed from thence to Oxford, together with Cranmer 
and Latimer, to be present at a disputation, when it was 
pretended that the controversy between the Papists and 
Protestants would be determined by a fair debate between the 
most eminent divines of both parties. Of the manner in 
which this disputation was conducted, and of the treatment 
which our prelate met with till his final condemnation for 
heresy, on the 1st of October, 1555, an account has been 
already given in our lives of Cranmer and Latimer. During 
the fortnight which he continued in prison after his con¬ 
demnation, the Popish party, as though they were ashamed 
to sacrifice a man of such acknowledged piety and learning, 
tried all their means of persuasion to gain him to their cause. 
Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, in great simplicity pointed 
out to him the only method of being reclaimed to the church 
of Rome, which was, to “ captivate his senses, and subdue 
his reasonand then, “ he doubted not but that he might 
be easily induced to acknowledge one church with them.” 
About the same time Lord Dacres, who was kinsman to 
Ridley, offered ten thousand pounds to the Queen, if she 
would preserve so valuable a life. But to this proposal she 
would not agree, on any other condition than that of the 
Bishop’s recantation ; and Ridley, with the spirit of a pri¬ 
mitive martyr, nobly refused life on such tenns. 
On the 15th of October, he was degraded from priest’s 
orders by the Bishop of Gloucester, and executed with 
Latimer, as related under the article Latimer. By some 
mismanagement of the fire on Ridley’s side of the stake, 
the flames were prevented from reaching the upper part of 
his body, and his legs were consumed before the fire ap¬ 
proached the vital parts, which made him endure dreadful 
torments for a long time. At length his sufferings were ter¬ 
minated by the explosion of a bag of gunpowder which had 
been suspended from his neck, after which he did not dis¬ 
cover any remaining signs of life. Such was the end of 
Ridley, a prelate of great learning and distinguished abilities, 
who, in his private character, was a pattern of piety, humi¬ 
lity, temperance, and regularity, to all around him. His 
temper was cheerful and agreeable ; his manners courteous 
and affable; and of the benevolence of his heart he gave 
abundant proofs, in his extraordinary generosity and libe¬ 
rality to the poor. Anthony Wood says of him, that “ he 
was a person small in stature, but great in learning, and pro¬ 
foundly read in divinity.” Among many other pieces, he 
was the author of ts A Treatise concerning Images, not to be 
set up nor worshipped, in Churches," written in the time of 
King Edward VI.; “ Brief Declaration of the Lord’s Supper,” 
written during his confinement at Oxford ; “ Certain godly 
and comfortable Conferences" between him and Latimer, 
during the time of then - imprisonment; “ A friendly Fare¬ 
well unto all his true Lovers,” written during his imprison- 
R I E 95 
ment; “ A Letter of Reconciliation written to Bishop 
Hooper,” &c .—Gloucester Ridley/'s Life of Bishop Ridley. 
Biog. Brit. Brit Biog. Wood's Athen. Vol. I. Neat's 
Hist. Pur it. Vol. I. chap, i—iii. passim. 
RIDLEY (Gloster, Dr.), a man of some eminence as a 
writer, was of the same family as the preceding Ridley. He 
was born in 1702, on board the Gloucester East Indiaman, 
whence he got his name, and received the early part of his 
education at Winchester. He then removed to New College, 
Oxford, of which he became a fellow and bachelor of laws; 
and here he laid the foundation of more acquirements, by 
which :he afterwards distinguished himself as a poet, histo¬ 
rian, and divine. In 1763 he published the Life of Bishop 
Ridley, in 4to. In 1765 he published his Review of 
Philips’s Life of Cardinal Pole; and, in 1761, in reward for 
his labours in this controversy and in another which the 
Confessional produced, he was presented by Archbishop 
Seeker to a golden prebend at Salisbury. Two poems by 
Dr. Ridley, one styled “ Jovi Eleutherio, or an Offering to 
Liberty,” and the other called “ Psyche,” were printed in 
Dodsley’s collection. Melampus, the sequel of the latter, 
has since been published by subscription. His transcript of 
the Syriac gospels was published, with a literal Latin 
translation, by Professor White, in 2 vols. 4to., at Oxford.— 
Nichols's Collection of Poems. 
RIDLEY (Humphrey), a physician and anatomist, who 
flourished about the beginning of the 18th century, was a 
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London, in 
which city he was a practitioner. He published in 1695, 
“ The Anatomy of the Brain, containing its Mechanism and 
Physiology, &c., to which is annexed a particular Account 
of Animal Functions and Muscular Motion," 8vo. The ana¬ 
tomical part of this work, though not without omissions and 
errors, has some improvements upon former descriptions: in 
particular, he discovered, or at least clearly made out, the cir¬ 
cular sinus of the dura mater. His physiological explanation 
of muscular motion is nearly the same as that of Boerhaave. 
The figures in this work were drawn by the eminent ana¬ 
tomist Cowper, and are repeated in the Supplement to his 
Anatomy. Ridley’s second work, entitled « Observationes 
qussdam Medico Practicae et Physiologicse,” 8vo., 1703, 
contains cases in a variety of disorders, which shew him to 
have been an attentive practitioner. There are subjoined 
ten dissections of hnorbid bodies, and a dissertation con¬ 
cerning the foramen ovale, accompanied with a figure.-— 
Hal/eri Bibl. Anat. 
RIDLEY, a small river in England, in Northumberland. 
RIDLEY, a village of England, in Northumberland, near 
Haltwhistle. 
RIDLEY, a township of the United States, in Delaware 
county, Pennsylvania. Population 991. 
RIDLINGTON, a parish of England, in Norfolk; 4 miles 
east of North Walsham. 
RIDLINGTON, a parish of England, in Rutlandshire; 
3 miles north-west of Uppingham. 
RIDO'TTO, s. [Italian; “ a company, a crew or assem¬ 
bly of good fellows; also, a gaming or tabling house, or other 
place where good companie doth meete.” Florio, 1598.] A 
sort of public assembly.—In the mornings, if you are high¬ 
bred enough, you are to go to White’s, where whist may en¬ 
gage you, till the masquerade, ridotto, or some other polite 
amusement calls you away. 
RIDWARE HAMPSTALL, a village of England, in 
Staffordshire, situated on the Blythe, between Rudgeley 
and Yoxall. 
RIE, s. An esculent grain. This differs from wheat in 
having a flatter spike, the corn larger and more naked. 
]\jTillcVt Sec Rye® 
RIEBEGK’S CASTEEL, a division of the district of 
Drakenstein, in the territory of the Cape of Good Hope, 
about 60 miles east of Cape Town 
RIED, or Riedt, a tolerably well built market town of 
Upper Austria, in the quarter of the Inn. It has 3000 in¬ 
habitants, who manufacture and trade in linen and woollen. 
A sharp action took place here in the end of October, 1805 
betwee^ 
