The eldest of the eight children of Joseph Riddle of Old Market Street, Bristol, he was born there on 7 April 1804.
He matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, on 18 January 1825, and obtained a first class in classics, graduating B.A.
In 1830 he was ordained deacon, and was successively curate of Everley, Upper Slaughter (from 1832), Reading and All Souls', Marylebone.
In 1836 he was assistant minister at Brunswick Chapel, Upper Berkeley Street, and in 1837 he became curate of Harrow, soon moving to Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire.
[1] At Ramsgate Riddle began a translation of Immanuel Johann Gerhard Scheller's folio Latin dictionary, Lexicon totius Latinitatis, and it was published at the Clarendon Press in 1835.