RIDLEY, Roger

An outsider with connexions with Essex and Cheshire rather than a native of Canterbury, Ridley was described as a brewer when he purchased the freedom of the city for the large sum of 40s. in September 1436. PRC 17/2, ff. 46-47v; CCA-CC-F/A/1, f. 236v. His election as cofferer three years later marked the beginning of a long and active career in civic affairs, in which he served no fewer than four terms as mayor. During the first of these terms, the city paid him 20s. for ‘divers expenses’ at Westminster, perhaps on business related to the subsequent negotiations between Canterbury and the Crown on which he was engaged after that term was over, and for which he received a further 3s. 4d. CCA-CC-F/A/2, ff. 38, 41. Ridley likewise spent time away in pursuit of the city’s business upon becoming mayor for a second time in 1458. His expenses included 52s. 1½d. incurred riding with others on ‘divers’ occasions to London, and a further 25s. 8d. for several visits he paid to the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourgchier, at Otford. Ibid. f. 60. In the same second mayoral term Ridley faced accusations in the Exchequer on the part of William Broke, the yeoman of the Crown who had received a commission to investigate whether the retail of wax candles at Canterbury complied with an Act of the Parliament of 1433. Broke alleged that a deputy of his had confiscated several batches of candles there in March 1459, only for Ridley and a group of accomplices to seize them back. E159/235, recorda Easter rot. 11; PROME, xi. 144.

Between his second and third mayoralties, Ridley held office as a jurat, served a second term as custodian of the keys to the common chest, played a part in important civic business and was elected to the Commons. He was one of those who received the earl of March in Canterbury upon that lord’s arrival in the city in June 1460, and he also helped to plead before the Council the city’s case concerning the aldermanry of Westgate, which the King had confiscated after the conviction for treason of (Sir) Thomas Brown II* in the following month. CCA-CC-F/A/2, f. 63v. In September the same year, shortly before he was re-elected mayor, he was returned to the Parliament of 1460-1 but there is no evidence for his attendance at that assembly: unusually, the city’s accounts record the payment of parliamentary wages to his fellow burgess, Nicholas Faunte*, but not to him. During his third term as mayor, Ridley received £35 19s. 2d. from the city, for acquiring a new charter and obtaining a quittance of old debts in the Exchequer, possibly business he conducted while at Westminster for the Parliament. Ibid. ff. 67v, 88v. Within a year of the same term, he fell out with a fellow citizen, Roger Brent†, who sued him in the court of King’s bench in Michaelmas term 1462. Brent alleged that Ridley and an accomplice, James Aas, had taken grain and other commodities belonging to him on 10 Sept. that year. KB27/806, rots. 2, 45.

An alderman of Canterbury by 1463, Ridley was engaged in further ad hoc civic business in 1465-6, when he, along with John Freningham*, Hamon Bele, William Bigge and his erstwhile adversary, Roger Brent, negotiated with St. Augustine’s abbey for a final settlement to the city’s dispute with that religious house over the Kentish manor of Langport. CCA-CC-F/A/2, f. 104. He must have been an elderly man when he began his final term as mayor later in the same decade. There is no evidence that he was involved in the wider political events of that troubled year, although he did appear in person before the barons of the Exchequer on 12 May 1470, to testify with regard to a seizure of silk that his servant, John Atwode, had made at Canterbury. E159/247, recorda Easter rot. 3. He did not survive for long after relinquishing the mayoralty for he died early in the new year. PRC 17/2, ff. 46-47v.

In spite of the prominence Ridley attained at Canterbury, there is scanty evidence for his personal affairs. The best source for these is his will, although this refers to just one of his wives and reveals nothing about his real property. He married at least three times: in November 1441 he had several messuages in Westgate by Canterbury settled on him and his then wife, Denise; by 1448 he had married Christine, widow and executrix of William Kyrkeby, with whom in Michaelmas term that year he brought an action of debt in the court of common pleas; by the end of his life he was married to Alice, the only spouse mentioned in his will. CP25(1)/115/316/552; CP40/751, rot. 232d; PRC 17/2, ff. 46-7v It is likely that his real property was concentrated in Canterbury and its environs, although by 1449 he had acquired holdings in one or other of the Cinque Ports, thus obtaining the freedom of the Ports and an exemption from payment of fifteenths and tenths. E179/124/140/5, m. 1d. Apart from his Westgate messuages, he probably held property in St. Mildred’s, apparently his parish of residence, and he and Thomas Mareschall of Canterbury acquired a seven-year farm of a moiety of a messuage in another of the city’s parishes, All Saints, from the Crown in 1455. PRC 17/2, ff. 46-47v; CFR, xix. 122, 140. Ridley was also involved in property dealings elsewhere in the city, although as a feoffee for William Benet* rather than on his own account. Canterbury city recs., Woodruff’s list, CCA-CC-WOODRUFF, bdle. 38, no. 1. Whatever the extent of his holdings, his wealth and status were such that he was described as a ‘gentleman’ in the general pardon he and others of Kent took the opportunity to obtain in the wake of Cade’s rebellion. CPR, 1446-52, p. 362.

In his will, dated 8 Jan. 1471, Ridley sought burial in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the parish church of St. Mildred. He bequeathed sums of money to St. Mildred’s and arranged for the holding of obits and masses there up to three years after his death. He also set aside no less than £13 6s. 8d. for new vestments for the church of St. Mary Bredman, provided for repairs to St. George’s gate and left sums to the cathedral priory, to the abbey of St. Augustine and to local hospitals. Other bequests reveal his links with Essex and Cheshire. He had a kinswoman in the former county, Elizabeth Brayne of Hornchurch, to whom he left 20 marks. As for the Cheshire connexion, he assigned money to the churches of Haughton and Malpas and to repairs to the highway between ‘Le Wiche’ (Nantwich) and Haughton and gave his sword, his scabbard decorated with silver, and his ‘garnysshed’ salet to Ralph Dodde of that county. Ridley provided for his then wife, Alice, by leaving her £20 in silver and directing that she should have an annuity of ten marks if she outlived him by more than three years. He appointed her one of his executors alongside three fellow members of Canterbury’s governing elite, Hamon Bele, Thomas Atwode† and William Ingram. Probate was granted on 21 Mar. 1471. PRC 17/2, ff. 46-47v. As the will does not mention any children it is assumed that he died without surviving issue, although J.L. Freeman, ‘Political Community in 15th-Cent. Mdx.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2002), 276, suggests that another Roger Ridley, a Chancery clerk who served as under sheriff of Mdx. in 1492-3 was his son.