Author: Ridley, Glocester
Biography:
RIDLEY, Glocester (1702-1774: ODNB)
The poet was born at sea during his parents’ voyage to Sumatra where his father, Matthew Ridley, took up a position in the East India Company at Bencoolen. His father named him for the East Indiaman they were aboard at the time of his birth. He was educated from 1719 at Winchester College, then, from 1721, at Trinity College, Oxford. The following year, he migrated to New College as a scholar; he was made fellow of his college in 1724 and was granted the BCL in 1729. On 30 July 1734 at St Paul’s Cathedral, he married by license Anne Gould of Edmonton parish. Ordained deacon in 1727 and priest in 1728, his earliest appointment was as assistant curate to Dr William Berriman at Fulham. Berriman was a Protestant controversialist and Syriac scholar; in those respects, Ridley followed closely in his footsteps. He was appointed rector of Weston Longueville, Norfolk, in 1734 and chaplain for the East India Company at Poplar, Middlesex, in Nov. 1744. In 1751 he was appointed rector of Rumford, Essex. Well respected by English savants, he was especially close to the anecdotist Joseph Spence. He laboured for years on the manuscript of a Syriac New Testament that he had obtained in the 1730s. He issued an interim report, in Latin, in 1761, but his transcription did not appear until after his death. His Melampus, A Poem in Four Books also appeared posthumously, published by subscription to benefit his widow and his four unmarried daughters. In 1763, he published a successful life of his ancestor the Protestant martyr bishop Nicholas Ridley. It earned him as much as £800. An enthusiastic anti-Catholic controversialist, his reward was a prebendal stall at Sailsbury Cathedral, presented to him by Archbishop Secker in 1766. The following year, Oxford conferred upon him the DD “by diploma, the highest mark of distinction” (Chalmers). He died at Poplar, age 72, on 3 Nov. 1774 and was buried seven days later at St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney. His wife survived him, as did a son and his four daughters. His son James, who predeceased him, published Tales of the Genii (1786) under the pseudonym Sir Charles Morell. His wife died at age 85 and was buried 12 Mar. 1795 at Hingham, Norfolk. (ODNB 15 Feb. 2024; CCEd 15 Feb. 2024; ancestry.com 15 Feb. 2024; PROB 11/1002; PROB 11/1259; GM [1774], 542; A. Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary [1816], 26: 218-19) JC