Background
He was born at Oxford about 1590.
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John Ridge
Edit ProfileEducation
He matriculated at Street John"s College, Oxford, on 16 June 1610, at the age of twenty, and graduated Bachelor of Arts on 23 May 1612, having already been ordained deacon by John Bridges, bishop of Oxford. Crowds of people attended, encouraged by James Glendinning, the vicar of Carnmoney.
Career
A nonconformist, he went over to Ireland, where he was probably ordained presbyter by Robert Echlin, bishop of Down and Connor. On 7 July 1619 Echlin admitted him to the vicarage of Antrim, on the presentation of Arthur Chichester. He built up his church (founded 1596), and gained a reputation as a preacher.
About 1626 Hugh Campbell, a layman from Ayrshire, established a meeting on the last Friday of each month at his house in Oldstone, two miles from Antrim.
To counter Campbell Ridge began a meeting for preaching and conference on the first Friday of each month at Antrim, and called in the aid of Robert Blair, Robert Cunningham (d 1637) of Holywood, company Down, and James Hamilton.
This was the origin of the Antrim meeting, an advisory body claiming no jurisdiction. The fame of the meeting brought to Antrim, about 1628, a company of English separatists and an Arminian, John Freeman, but they were unsuccessful in making proselytes.
Ridge was one of the five beneficed clergy who, at the primary visitation of Henry Leslie at Lisburn in July 1636, refused to subscribe to the new canons, which were to assimilate the doctrine and ceremonies of the Irish church to those of England.
The private conference which followed went unrecorded. In the public disputation with Leslie at Belfast (on 11 August) Ridge took no part, but when called up for sentence on 12 August he admitted that Leslie had given the five non-subscribers a fair, though not a full, hearing. Leslie thought his scruples arose from a melancholy temperament.
The silenced clergymen, with the exception of Edward Brice, retired to Scotland.
They were received at Irvine, Ayrshire, by David Dickson (1583?-1663). Here Ridge is believed to have died in 1637, but there is no record of his death or burial.
