English School 19th, Century portrait of Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London (1500-1555)

English School 19th, Century

Portrait of Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London (1500-1555)

oil on panel

33.50 x 22 cm (13.1/4 x 8.3/4 in.)

Ridley, Nicholas (c. 1502–1555), bishop of London and protestant martyr, was born only a short distance away from Hadrian's Wall, near Willimontswick, to a Northumberland gentry family whose members were prominent in the life of the church, both before and during the Reformation. His father was Christopher Ridley of Unthank Hall; his mother is said to have been Anne Blenkinsop. Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London and later bishop of Durham, was a relative.

Education and evangelical conversion

Much of Nicholas Ridley's early life and career were shaped by Cambridge University—'my loving mother and tender nurse' (Last farewell, 91–2)—and his father's brother Robert Ridley. Robert was Tunstall's secretary and a friend of Erasmus, but in his thinking (in keeping with the English style of humanism), classical and biblical studies were blended with medieval scholasticism. Terence professor in the faculty of arts in the first decade of the century, he was a considerable figure in the university and in the church at large, holding numerous livings in and near London and also a prebend in St Paul's. In some respects an ambivalent figure, he made strenuous efforts to combat heresy, but nevertheless encouraged the setting up of the university's first press. He was an important influence on Thomas Cranmer, and defrayed his nephew Nicholas'searly expenses at Cambridge. Until his death, most likely in 1536, Robert Ridleyprobably loomed large in Nicholas's life.

After attending school at Newcastle upon Tyne, about 1518, in his middle to late teens, the young Nicholas Ridley entered Pembroke College, which he found to be 'studious, well learned, and a great setter forth of Christ's Gospel'. At the end of his life he remembered how, within the walls of its orchard, he had learned by heart the greater part of the epistles of St Paul, as well as much of the rest of the New Testament (Last farewell, 92). His own zeal for learning was well rewarded. He received from the university every promotion that could be bestowed: including all of his degrees (BA, 1522; MA, 1525; BTh, 1537; DTh, 1541); a fellowship at Pembroke from 1524; a chaplaincy to the university in 1531; and a university professorship in Greek (from 1535 to 1537–8). Ultimately he became master of Pembroke (1540), a distinction he retained until his disgrace. He is also reported to have studied at Paris and Louvain.

With his many talents and superb connections, from the late 1530s Ridley began to receive ever more exalted attention from outside the university. In 1537 Archbishop Cranmer called him from Cambridge to be one of his chaplains, and also gave him his first cure, on 30 April 1538, by making him vicar of the 'worshipful and wealthy' parish of Herne in Kent (Last farewell, 92). As with Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer, Ridley's re-evaluation of Christian doctrine proceeded gradually. Initially the reformers stressed the great Pauline aspiration of 'preaching Christ', and they strove to disseminate the word of God through sermons and the printing press with the aim of bringing about a deep spiritual renewal throughout society. The distracting practices that the reformers felt had grown up in the Roman church in the post-apostolic centuries had to be identified and removed through self-referencing new interpretations of scripture, against which all doctrine and practices had to be judged. Much of the received wisdom of the Catholic church (including the sacraments) had to be re-examined, and where necessary cast aside. At this early period Ridley's views concerning the eucharist were conventional (by his own later admission), though his sermons had been strongly evangelical for some time. At Herne he encouraged the s