divisions of Lindsey were known as the north, south and west ridings respectively.
See Felix Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1888-89); William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England; Richard Cleasby, Icelandic Dictionary; New English Dictionary; and William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. vi., edited by John Caley and others (1846). (G. J. T.)
RIDLEY, NICHOLAS (c. 1500–1555), English bishop and martyr, was descended from an old Northumberland family. The second son of Christopher Ridley of Unthank Hall, near Willemoteswick, in that county, he was born in the beginning of the 16th century. From a school at Newcastle-on-Tyne he was sent about 1518 to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, being supported there by his uncle, Dr Robert Ridley (d. 1536), and specially distinguishing hims elfin Greek. Having graduated M.A. in 1526, he went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Louvain, and on his return to Cambridge he was appointed junior treasurer of his college. In 1534 he was one of the university proctors, and he signed the decree of the university against the jurisdiction of the pope in England. About this time Ridley, who was now chaplain to the university, began to distinguish himself as an orator and a disputant, and to show leanings to the reformed faith. Having proceeded B.D. in 1537-, he was appointed by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, one of his chaplains, and in April 1538 the same prelate instituted him to the vicarage of Herne in Kent. In 1 540 he was chosen master of Pembroke Hall; in 1541 he became chaplain to Henry VIII. and canon of Canterbury. In 1543 he was accused of heretical teaching and practices, but he managed to allay the suspicions of the royal commissioners, although just after his exculpation he finally abandoned the doctrine of transubstantiation.
In 1547 Ridley was presented by his college to the Cambridgeshire living of Soham, and in September of the same year he was nominated bishop of Rochester. Edward VI. was now on the throne and the new bishop was in high favour. He was one of the visitors who were appointed to establish protestantism in the university of Cambridge; in 1548 he helped to compile the English prayer book; and in 1549 he was one of the commissioners who examined Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. He concurred in their deprivation and succeeded Bonner in, the see of London. Having signed the letters patent settling the English crown on Lady Jane Grey, Ridley, in a. sermon preached at St Paul's cross on the 9th of July 1553, affirmed that the princesses Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate and that the succession of the former would be disastrous to the religious interests of England. When Lady ]ane's cause was lost, however, he went to Framlingham to ask Queen Mary's pardon, but at once he was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. From his prison he wrote in defence of his religious opinions, and early in 1554 he, with Cranmer and Latimer, was sent to Oxford to be examined. He defended himself against a number of divines, but was declared a heretic, and this was followed by his excommunication. He refused to recant, and in, October 1555 he was tried for heresy under the new penal. laws, being degraded and sentenced to death. With Cranmer and Latimer he met his end at the stake in Oxford on the 16th of October 1555.
Ridley was a voluminous writer, but many of his writings have been lost. The Works of Nicholas Ridley D.D. were edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. Henry Christmas in 1841. His Life was written by Dr Gloucester Ridley in 1763, and there is a memoir of him in H. C. G. Moule's edition of the bishops' Declaration of the Lord's Supper (189). See also John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (new ed., 1877); Strype's Memorials of Cranmer (new ed., Oxford, 1840); G. Burnet's History of the Reformation (new ed., Oxford, 1865); J. A. Froude's History of England (1881 fol.); and J. Lingard's History of England (1854-55).
RIDOLFI, or Ridolfo, ROBERTO DI (1531–1612), Italian conspirator, belonged to a famous family of Florence, where he was born on the 18th of November 1531. As a banker he had business connexions with England, and about 1555 he settled in London, where he soon became a person of some importance,
and consorted with William Cecil and other prominent men. During the =early years of Elizabeth's reign he began to take a more active part in politics, associating with the discontented Roman Catholics in England and communicating with their friends abroad. In 1570 he set to work on the plot against the queen which is usually associated with his name. His intention was to marry Mary, queen of Scots, to the duke of Norfolk and to place her on the English throne. With the aid of John Lesley, bishop of Ross, he gained the consent of these high personages to the conspiracy, and then in 1571 he visited the duke of Alva at Brussels, Pius V. at Rome, and Philip II. at Madrid to explain to them his scheme and to gain their active assistance thereto. His messenger, by name Charles Baillie (1542–1625), was, however, seized at Dover, and in other ways the English government heard of the intended rising. Consequently, Norfolk and Lesley, were arrested, the former being condemned. to-death in January 1572. Ridolii, who was then in Paris, could do nothing when he heard this news, and his scheme collapsed. Afterwards he served the pope, but much of his later life was spent in Florence, where he became a senator and where he died on the 18th of February 1612.
RIEGER, PHILIPP FRIEDRICK VON (1818–1903), Bohemian politician and publicist, was born on the 18th of December 1818 at Semil in the circle of Jičin, Bohemia. He first came into prominence as one of the Czech leaders in the revolution of 1848. He was returned by seven constituencies to the Reichtstag at Vienna, where he was the leader of the Czech party. In 1853 he married a daughter of the historian Palacky. In 1858 he started the Slovnik naučny, the Czech national encyclopedia, the first volume of which was published in 1859, the 11th and last in 1874. He was also instrumental in founding the first Czech political daily newspaper published in Prague, which appeared on the 1st of January 1861, and of which he was for awhile the editor. After the issue of the " October diploma " of 1860, Rieger, with his father-in-law, Palacky, undertook the leadership of the reconstituted Czech party, and after the decision of this party in 1863 no longer to attend the Austrian Reichsrath, he led the agitation in favour of the restoration of the Bohemian kingdom: In 1871 he conducted the negotiations with the Hohenenwarth ministry for a federal constitution of the empire, which broke down owing to his extreme gratitude in the matter of Bohemian independence. On the reappearance of the Czechs in the Bohemian diet (1878) and the Austrian Reichsrath (1879) Rieger was one of the leaders of the federalist majority supporting Count Taaffe's government the chief of the so-called “ Old Czechs.” On his seventieth birthday (December 10, 1888) he received a national gift of 100,000 gulden; but, in spite of this evidence of his popularity, his conservatism, his close Connexion with the Bohemian nobility and his clerical tendencies brought him into conflict with the growing influence of the radical “Young Czech” party, and in 1891, together with the other “Old Czechs,” he was defeated at the poll. In March 1897 he was created a baron (Freiherr) and given a seat in the Upper House. He continued occasionally to interfere in politics; but his influence was now at an end, though when he died, on the 3rd of March 1903, his funeral at Prague was made the occasion of a magnificent demonstration of respect.
RIEGO NUÑEZ, RAFAEL DEL (1784–1823), Spanish
army officer, who has the melancholy distinction of having begun the long series of political military mutinies—pronunciamientos—in Spain, was born at Santa Maria de Tuna in Asturias on the 2nd of April 1784. He was educated for the legal profession at Oviedo, and passed the necessary examinations. But in 1807 he enlisted in the guard. When the French invasion took place in 1808, he was employed by the junta of Asturias and placed in command of a newly raised battalion. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Espinosa de los Monteros, on the 10th and 11th of November 1808, and was sent to France. During his years of imprisonment he, like many others of his countrymen, was converted to liberalism on the French model. Riego had the good fortune to escape and to reach England after various wanderings in Switzerland and Germany. In England
