Nicholas Ridley (martyr) - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

The sentence was carried out on 16 October 1555 in Oxford. Cranmer was taken to a tower to watch the proceedings. Ridley burned extremely slowly and suffered a great deal, through no fault of the executioner: Ridley's brother-in-law foolishly put more faggots on the pyre, in order to speed Ridley's death, while in fact they caused only Ridley's lower parts to burn. Latimer is supposed to have said to Ridley, "Be of good comfort, and play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." This is quoted in Acts and Monuments by John Foxe, who put the story of their deaths to effective use. It is not, however, in the first edition of the book: there Foxe says that he can "learn from no man" what Ridley and Latimer said to each other.

A metal cross in a cobbled patch of road in Broad Street, Oxford marks the site. Eventually Ridley and Latimer were seen as martyrs for their support of a Church of England independent from the Roman Catholic Church. Along with Thomas Cranmer, they are known as the Oxford Martyrs.

In the Victorian era, his death was commemorated by the Martyrs' Memorial, located near the site of his execution. As well as being a monument to the English Reformation, the memorial is even more so an interesting landmark of the 19th century Oxford Movement, propagated by John Keble, John Henry Newman and others. Profoundly alarmed at the Catholic realignment the movement was bringing into to the Church of England, low church Anglican clergy raised the funds for erecting the monument, with its highly anti-Roman Catholic inscription, as a public propaganda move. As a result the monument was built 300 years after the events it commemorates.

In 1881, Ridley Hall in Cambridge, England, was founded in his memory for the training of Anglican priests. Ridley College, a private University-preparatory school located in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, was founded in his honour in 1889. Also named after him is Ridley Melbourne - Mission & Ministry College, a theological college in Australia, founded in 1910. There is a Church of England church dedicated to him in Welling, southeast London. A famous excerpt from a dialogue between Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer is used in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this version, the line spoken by Latimer towards Ridley before their burning at the stake is rendered: "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." Ridley, along with Latimer, is remembered with a commemoration in the Calendar of saints in some parts of the Anglican Communion on 16 October.