Background
Risby was born in the parish of Saint Lawrence, Reading, in 1489, and entered Winchester College in 1500.
Risby was born in the parish of Saint Lawrence, Reading, in 1489, and entered Winchester College in 1500.
Winchester College.
He was subsequently a fellow of New College, Oxford, taking his degree in 1510. Risby became a supporter of Dame Elizabeth Barton, Order of St. Benedict, widely known as the "Holy Maid of Kent", who had the reputation of being a visionary. When she declared that King Henry would soon die if he continued his actions against the papacy, the king turned against her and she was condemned to death by an Acting of Attainder (25 Henry VIII, c 12), together with several of her supporters: Hugh Rich, Order of Friars Minor, guardian of the Observant friary at Richmond, Edward Bocking and John Dering, Bachelor of Divinity (Oxfordshire), both Benedictine monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, Henry Gold, Master of Arts (Street John"s College, Cambridge), Parson of Saint Mary Aldermanbury, London, and Vicar of Hayes, Middlesex, and Richard Master, Master of Arts (King"s College, Oxfordshire), Rector of Aldington, Kent, who was pardoned.
But by some oversight Master"s name was included and Risby"s omitted in the catalogue of praetermissi.
Friar Thomas Bourchier, who took the Franciscan habit at Greenwich about 1557, wrote a work chronicling the lives of the Observant friars who were executed under the Tudors, In it he wrote that Risby and Rich had been offered their freedom twice, if they would accept the king"s supremacy. Risby was executed by hanging along with the others, including Barton, at Tyburn, London, on 20 April 1534.