Cranmer, Cranmer leaneth to Ridley, and Ridley to the singularity of his own wit.’ In his tract on the ‘Lord's Supper’ he defined and justified the doctrine on the subject which the church of England adopted. His reputation as a preacher must be accepted on hearsay, for none of his sermons are extant. Some enthusiastic verses on his courage, by the poet Quarles, contain the lines:
Rome thundered death, but Ridley's dauntless eye
Star'd in death's face and scorned death standing by.
Wordsworth commemorated his resolution in a sonnet on the ‘Marian Martyrs.’
Portraits are at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and at Fulham Palace. One, attributed to Holbein, was engraved by I. Miller for Glocester Ridley's biography in 1763. There is an engraved portrait by Simon Pass in Holland's ‘Herωologia;’ other engravings are by R. White, W. Marshall, Houston, and Dean. An avenue in the gardens of Pembroke College, Cambridge, is still known as Ridley's Walk.
Ridley published in his lifetime only ‘Injunctions given in the Visitation … for an uniformitie in the Diocese of London,’ 1550, and ‘Articles to be enquired into’ at the same visitation. Of the long list of writings supplied by Tanner comparatively few are now known to be extant. After Ridley's death there were published: 1. ‘A Brief Declaration of the Lordes Supper, written by the Singular Learned Man, and most constant Martir of Jesus Christ: Nicholas Rydley, Bishop of London, Prisoner in Oxforde, a little before he suffered Deathe for the True Testimonye of Christ, Roma 8 Anno 1555,’ probably published at Geneva (Brit. Mus.) The preface is believed to be by William Whittingham [q. v.] A Latin translation appeared at Geneva, ‘apud Joannem Crispinum,’ 1556. New editions by Henry Wharton appeared in 1688, and by the Rev. Dr. Moule in 1895. The tract was included in Randolph's ‘Enchiridion Theologicum’ (1752 and 1812). 2. ‘Certain Godly, Learned, and Comfortable Conferences betwene the two Reverend Fathers and Holy Martyrs in Christ, D. Nicolas Rydley, late Bisshoppe of London, and Mr. Hugh Latimer, sometyme Bisshop of Worcester, during the Tyme of their imprisonmentes, anno 1556,’ probably printed at Zurich, 1556, 8vo (Brit. Mus.); edited by John Olde, Geneva, 1556, and reprinted with No. 1 in London in 1574. 3. ‘A Friendly Farewel which Master Doctor Ridley … did write beinge prisoner in Oxeforde unto all his true louers and frendes in God a little before that he suffred,’ London, by John Day, 1559; edited by John Foxe (Brit. Mus.) 4. ‘A Pituous Lamentation of the Miserable Estate of the Church of Christ in England in the time of Queen Mary, wherein is conteyned a learned comparison betwene the comfortable Doctryne of the Gospell, and the Traditions of the Popyshe Religion; with an instruction howe the true Christian oughte to behave himselfe in the tyme of Tryall; wrytten by Nicolas Rydley, late Bishoppe of London,’ London, by William Powell, 1566 (Brit. Mus.)
Foxe printed in his ‘Actes and Monuments’ the following works of Ridley for the first time: ‘A Treatise concerning Images, that they are not to be set up nor Worshipped in Churches;’ ‘A Conference which he had with Secretary Bourne, Feckenham, and others, at the Lieutenant's Table in the Tower, and wrote out with his own hand;’ ‘Ridley's Judgment in the Disputations concerning the Sacrament held at Cambridge in June 1549;’ and the ‘Disputation at Oxford with Dr. Smith and others on 17 April 1554, with the order and manner of his last examination before the Queen's Commissioners on the 30 day of September 1555.’ The last disputation was appended in Italian to M. A. Florio's ‘Historia de la Vita de Signora Giovanna Graia,’ 1607. Albany Langdaile published in 1556 a ‘confutatio’ of Ridley's determination of the disputation at Cambridge in 1549.
Coverdale in his ‘Letters of the Martyrs,’ Foxe, Burnet in his ‘Reformation,’ and Strype preserve some of Ridley's letters. Others are among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum and in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Thirty-four of them have been printed, with all the works already enumerated and a few smaller pieces in the ‘Works of Nicholas Ridley, D.D.,’ edited for the Parker Society by Rev. Henry Christmas (Cambridge, 1841). Selections from Ridley's writings are included in Legh Richmond's ‘Fathers of the English Church’ (vol. iv.), 1807, and in Bickersteth's ‘Testimony of the Reformers’ (1836).
[The biography by Glocester Ridley (1763) is a discursive defence of the protestant reformation. A far more businesslike memoir appears in the Rev. Dr. Moule's edition of Ridley's ‘Declaration of the Lord's Supper,’ 1895. The account of Ridley in Foxe's Actes and Monuments is the main original source. See also Ridlon's Ancient Ryedales (Manchester, New Hampshire, 1884), pp. 419–24; Ascham's Letters; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr.; Godwin, De Præsulibus, ed. Richardson, 1743, p. 192; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Froude's Hist.; Lingard's Hist.; Burnet's Hist. of Reformation; Strype's Works.]
