Edward Cridge was an English clergyman, educator, and writer. He was a Cambridge University graduate and ordained Anglican minister who, with his wife, Mary Winmill, made the trip around Cape Horn to be the second chaplain and boarding school operator at Fort Victoria in 1855.
Background
Edward Cridge was born on December 17, 1817, in Bratton Fleming, Devon. He was the son of John and Grace Cridge. His mother died when he was still very young, leaving Cridge's father to raise him alone. Cridge immigrated to Canada in 1855.
Education
Edward Cridge attended Oundle School in Devonshire and received a Bachelor of Arts from Saint Peter's College (now Peterhouse) in Cambridge in 1848.
In 1837 Edward Cridge was appointed the third master of Oundle grammar school in Northampton, a position he would hold for six years. He was ordained to deacon in 1848. Cridge became a priest in 1849 and served as curate of North Walsham, West Ham, and Stratford. Following a move to Essex in 1851, Cridge was acting head of Essex's Christ Church and, during his three-year tenure, proved to be a very able and dedicated minister to his congregation.
In 1854 Edward Cridge was appointed to the chaplaincy of the Hudson's Bay Company at Victoria. He and his wife, Mary, reached Victoria on 1 April 1855. They became powerhouses in the social and religious life of the community, building the first Victoria District Church (Christ Church Cathedral) in 1856, where Cridge began as pastor in 1856. Also, they started the first hospital in 1858, a Young Men's Christian Association in 1859, and the Protestant Orphans' Home in 1873.
When in 1860, the well-connected George Hills was appointed bishop of the diocese, he hired Edward Cridge to be a rector of Christ Church Cathedral, and in 1865, appointed Cridge a dean, setting the stage for a dramatic doctrinal controversy. Hills was a high-church ritualist, and Cridge was more of a charismatic evangelical. Cridge defied Hills' authority, was put on trial in an ecclesiastical court, and in 1874 stripped of his offices. By the next year, Cridge became a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church of Chicago, overseeing Church affairs from San Francisco to Alaska. He continued to preach at the new Church of Our Lord from 1875 until his resignation in 1895. There he remained into his 90s. Edward Cridge would live on until 1913 when he passed in his 95th year.
After the dispute with Bishop Hills, Cridge had maintained many of his supporters from the old Christ Church, including many of his stalwart friends from the old HBC days. Cridge took his remaining followers and joined the Reformed Episcopal Church of America in early 1875; he was elected Bishop of the Pacific Coast jurisdiction later the same year.
Views
Edward Cridge believed that every congregation, with its accepted pastor, is a full church, that the scriptures alone are binding on the consciences of churchmen, and are the virtual law. Also, that the only accountable and lawful expounder and interpreter of this law is the pastor of the congregation to whom not even the Bishop can dictate.
Personality
Edward Cridge was a good and sincere man.
Connections
Edward Cridge married Mary Winnell on September 14, 1854. They had nine children, but only four attained adulthood. In one dreadful two-month period in the winter of 1864-1865, four Cridge children died of black measles.