Richard Kidder, according to his autobiography (which is more of an apologia for the many controversies in his diocese in which he was later involved), was the penultimate child in the large brood of nine children of William Kidder, a man ‘of great diligence and industry’, who ‘made a shift with a little estate of his own ... to give his children a decent education’. His mother he described as ‘a woman of great sanctity and piety’, who had ‘the name of a puritan fixed upon her’. As his father was unable to provide for his education at university, Kidder was intended as an apothecary, but through the efforts of two friends, apparently London ministers, he was able to enter Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1649. Though tutored at the puritan-leaning Emmanuel by the nonconformist Samuel Cradock, about whom Kidder later claimed, ‘it is hardly possible that one man can owe to another more than I do to him’, Kidder consciously took the decision to take episcopal orders, rather than Presbyterian. Ralph Brownrigg†, the deprived bishop of Exeter, ordained him in a private house in 1658 and the following year Kidder entered into a living in the gift of the college, the vicarage of Stanground in Huntingdonshire. Despite his episcopal orders, and his refusal to sign the Engagement or the Covenant, he was still ejected from that living on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1662, because he refused to subscribe to the newly amended prayer book without seeing a copy of it first; a copy was not made available to him until three weeks after his ejectment. He conformed soon afterwards and through the mediation of a university friend was able in October 1664 to obtain the rectory of Rayne in Essex, in the gift of Arthur Capell, earl of Essex.
From 1674 London became the centre of his ecclesiastical career. In that year William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, offered Kidder the living of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in his gift as dean of St Paul’s. Kidder remained in charge of the parish only briefly and refused to be instituted, as he was unwilling to enforce kneeling at communion on reluctant parishioners. The Presbyterian Sir Harbottle Grimston‡, master of the rolls, did prevail upon him to accept the post of preacher at the Rolls Chapel and shortly afterwards he also accepted from the Merchant Taylors’ Company the small and poor living of St Martin Outwich, neighbour to his rejected parish of St Helen’s. With these London commitments, he took up permanent residence in the capital and began to gain a glowing reputation as a pastor, preacher and scholar, which brought him the patronage of many leading families. It also brought him tragedy. Three of his children died during an outbreak of smallpox in 1680.
Kidder was concerned with the education of many of the children of the City elite and placed many of them in both Merchant Taylors’ School and then Emmanuel College. In particular he was the tutor and patron of the future nonjuror George Harbin and of William Dawes, the future archbishop of York. Kidder later named the latter’s stepfather, the naval official Sir Anthony Deane‡ as one of his executors. Kidder became most closely integrated with the Finch family, acquiring his most potent patrons in Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, and his son Daniel Finch, later 2nd earl of Nottingham, nephew to Kidder’s earlier benefactor, Mary Rich, the widowed countess of Warwick. In London Kidder also became closely connected with John Tillotson, later archbishop of Canterbury, and he became integrated into an influential body of prominent London clerics, many of whom owed their position to Nottingham’s influence and who were later to serve as bishops – John Sharp, the future archbishop of York, Edward Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester, Thomas Tenison, another future archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, who would become bishop of Norwich, and Simon Patrick, later bishop of Ely. Kidder was also particularly close to leading figures in the movement for the ‘reformation of manners’, particularly Edward Fowler, then vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate and a future bishop of Gloucester, and to the famous German ‘pathetic preacher’ at the Savoy, Anthony Horneck, whose eulogistic biography he wrote after Horneck’s death in 1697.
On 16 Sept. 1681 Kidder was, through Nottingham’s patronage, appointed a canon of Norwich at the same time as John Sharp, Nottingham’s chaplain, was made dean of that chapter. Kidder refused several additional livings over the next four years including the lectureship at Ipswich, which he was twice offered, by both Charles II and James II. He was tempted by this latter offer but seems to have been keen to maintain his London connections and preferred to retain his living in the City. With the accession of James II, Kidder defended the Church of England against the threat of Catholicism both in the pulpit and in print. He joined with the other clerics in London of the Nottingham-Sharp circle in publishing and preaching against the teachings of Rome and was particularly concerned by the situation in Norwich which he felt was the town in greatest danger of apostasy. After the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, one of them, William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, stayed at Kidder’s London residence for several weeks as it was thought ‘the danger was not over ... though they were acquitted in Westminster Hall’. Nevertheless, Kidder later in his memoirs felt the need to justify some of his behaviour in the final months of James’s reign, particularly his unpublished sermon of 15 Jan. 1688 which seemed to assent to the king’s policies.
In the autumn of 1689 Nottingham and Tillotson, clerk of the closet from March 1689, promoted their colleagues among the London clergy to ecclesiastical positions and Kidder was appointed dean of Peterborough and royal chaplain. He was also placed on the commission of ten bishops and 20 clergy assigned to make alterations in the prayer book and liturgy to aid in the comprehension of Dissenters into the national Church. Kidder supported Nottingham and Tillotson in their plan for comprehension, but this quickly ran into opposition and Roger Morrice recorded that even when Kidder argued for changes to some of the ‘minuter things in the Commons Prayer’, it met with ‘great opposition from all the rest present’ in the commission.
in such trouble and consternation as I have seldom been in during my whole life. I saw the strait I was then in. If I took this bishopric, I well knew I must meet with trouble and envy. If I refused, I knew the consequence of that also, especially Dr Beveridge having so lately done it.Life of Kidder, 62.
The reference to the fate of William Beveridge, later bishop of St Asaph, whose decision to refuse Bath and Wells led him to be overlooked for promotion to a bishopric until the following reign, suggests that at least part of his consternation resulted from a fear of stifling his promotion prospects. He had certainly already let it be known that he was desirous of becoming a bishop and ‘would not be so stiff as absolutely to refuse a bishopric’, although he had excepted Bath.
He returned to the capital in October for the winter. On 31 Oct. 1691, nine days into the session of 1691-2, Kidder took his seat in the House to take the requisite oaths as bishop of Bath and Wells. He attended half of the session’s sitting days during which he was named to 13 committees on legislation. He was one of the 14 bishops to sign the petition of late December 1691 asking the king for a proclamation against impiety and vice and for a more rigorous implementation of the laws against blasphemy.
Kidder returned to Wells in the summer and began his primary visitation, issuing strong pastoral directions to the clergy on the need to instigate moral reformation in the diocese.
Kidder was in the capital again by 5 Nov. 1692, as that day he preached to the king and queen a sermon of thanksgiving at Whitehall for deliverance from ‘cruel and bloodthirsty men’. He did not sit in the House until 10 Nov. 1692 and again proceeded to attend just under half (47 per cent) of the sittings of the 1692-3 session, during which he was named to six committees on private estate bills. Although he was marked as present on 31 Dec. 1692, his vote on the motion to commit the place bill was not recorded by Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, suggesting that he may have chosen to abstain. He was present on 3 Jan. 1693 when he did join both Tillotson and Nottingham in voting against the passage of the bill. At the same time it was predicted that he would support the bill to divorce the Protestant Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, from his Catholic wife, but again he appears to have abstained from the vote on whether to read the bill on 2 Jan. 1693, for his name does not appear in Ailesbury’s list, although he is marked as present in the Journal. He ended his winter sojourn in the capital in some controversy when he preached the Lenten sermon at Whitehall on 12 Mar., two days before the end of the session. He chose for his text Matthew 5:43, ‘to speak of praying for our enemies, and did more particularly consider those places in the book of Psalms where the Psalmist seems to pray against them. I gave that account of that matter which I judged was agreeable to truth’. However, such sentiments did not agree with a government engaged in a long war with France and prompted attacks on him and his views.
There were other areas where Kidder’s views were not greeted with universal acclaim. John Evelyn resented that Sir John Rotheram forced Evelyn and the other trustees to name Kidder as the Boyle lecturer for both 1693 and 1694, the second and third year of the lecture series, instead of the classicist Richard Bentley, who had acquitted himself so well in the first lecture in 1692. Evelyn attended Kidder’s lecture on 2 Jan. 1693 where he was ‘asserting the doctrine of Christ, against the Jews, with the usual topics, but speaking nothing extraordinary’.
Kidder recounted that he ‘met with a great many troubles’ in 1694, including problems with one of his archdeacons, Edwin Sandys, who refused to recognize Kidder as his bishop.
1) It was a matter of blood, and I could not vote for the bill without two credible witnesses and full proof. 2) I feared it would be an ill precedent. For if the present law [the Treason Trials Act of 1696], might be broke in upon now it might be of ill consequence in after reigns. And 3) because I saw no necessity at all in the present case, why we should use extraordinary means. The government could not fear Sir John Fenwick, and I was (and am still) of opinion that such methods ought not to be used unless upon exigences and dangers that were very extraordinary. I am sure I went against all my worldly interest in this vote, but I went according to my conscience.Life of Kidder, 132-3; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 134.
As he explicitly recorded, he returned to the House on 7 Jan. 1697 to put his name to the formal protest in the Journal, complete with its own extensive reasons against the passage of the bill. He continued to attend regularly until he was, on 27 Jan. 1697, again given leave to go to the country for his health, and this time he took the House up on its offer and retreated from the House from that day, missing the final three months of the session. In May 1697 he informed a friend that he had been ‘dangerously ill’, but he continued to manage his diocese, pursuing clergy with forged orders.
He did not attend the next four parliamentary sessions and on 1 June 1698 his proxy with Edward Fowler of Gloucester was registered for the last weeks of the 1697-8 session. He may have registered his proxy in the succeeding three sessions, of 1698-9, 1699-1700 and the Parliament of 1701, but the proxy registers for those sessions are now lost. Kidder remained at Wells during this long period, complaining ‘how piety decays, and how rampant both vice and popery are’ and urging that ‘’tis time for this poor Church of England to be awakened’.
Kidder reappeared in Parliament on 28 Apr. 1702, after the accession of Anne, but still he only attended a further seven sittings of that Parliament, which was dissolved on 2 July. He returned to the House for the following session of 1702-3, on 9 Nov., on which day he was named to the committee to compose an address congratulating the queen on the recovery of Prince George, of Denmark, duke of Cumberland. He attended for little more than ten per cent of the session and the dates of his sittings show a clear concern with the occasional conformity bill. On 3 Dec. 1702 he was present for the second reading of the bill and its committal to the whole House. Kidder voted for a wrecking amendment proposed by John Somers, Baron Somers which would limit the scope of the bill to those affected by the 1673 Test Act, thus removing corporation officials from its penalties. A group of bishops led by Tenison of Canterbury (and which appears to have included Kidder) voted for the measure, while ten Tory-inclined bishops, led by Sharp of York, opposed it.
On 5 Feb. 1703 Kidder attended the House for the last time and returned to Wells. During the ‘great storm’ of 26 Nov. 1703, his troubled tenure as bishop of Bath and Wells ended suddenly when he and his wife were crushed in bed by a falling chimney stack.