Ridley was one of the Oxford Martyrs burned at the stake during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey.

He is remembered with a commemoration in the calendar of saints (with Hugh Latimer) in some parts of the Anglican Communion (Church of England) on 16 October.

As a boy, Ridley was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and Pembroke College, Cambridge,[3] where he proceeded to Master of Arts in 1525.

Cranmer had resolved to support the English Reformation by gradually replacing the old guard in his ecclesiastical province with men who followed the new thinking.

[8] Ridley was made the Bishop of Rochester in 1547, and shortly after coming to office, directed that the altars in the churches of his diocese should be removed, and tables put in their place to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

In 1548, he helped Cranmer compile the first Book of Common Prayer and in 1549 he was one of the commissioners who investigated Bishops Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner.

John Hooper, having been exiled during King Henry's reign, returned to England in 1548 from the churches in Zurich that had been reformed by Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in a highly iconoclastic fashion.

[10] Summoned to answer to the Privy Council and archbishop—who were primarily concerned with Hooper's willingness to accept the royal supremacy, which was also part of the oath for newly ordained clergy—Hooper evidently made sufficient reassurances, as he was soon appointed to the bishopric of Gloucester.

Vestments were to be considered a matter of adiaphora, or Res Indifferentes ("things indifferent", as opposed to an article of faith), and Hooper could be ordained without them at his discretion, but he must allow that others could wear them.

Warwick disagreed, emphasising that the king must be obeyed in things indifferent, and he pointed to St Paul's concessions to Jewish traditions in the early church.

Hooper maintains that priestly garb distinguishing clergy from laity is not indicated by scripture; there is no mention of it in the New Testament as being in use in the early church, and the use of priestly clothing in the Old Testament is a Hebrew practice, a type or foreshadowing that finds its antitype in Christ, who abolishes the old order and recognises the spiritual equality, or priesthood, of all Christians.

Ridley denies that early church practices are normative for the present situation, and he links such primitivist arguments with the Anabaptists.

Joking that Hooper's reference to Christ's nakedness on the cross is as insignificant as the clothing King Herod put Christ in and "a jolly argument" for the Adamites, Ridley does not dispute Hooper's main typological argument, but neither does he accept that vestments are necessarily or exclusively identified with Israel and the Roman church.

Ridley warned Hooper of the implications of an attack on English ecclesiastical and civil authority and of the consequences of radical individual liberties, while also reminding him that it was Parliament that established the "Book of Common Prayer in the church of England".

Moreover, Hooper himself addressed the civil magistrates, suggesting that the clergy supporting vestments were a threat to the state, and he declared his willingness to be martyred for his cause.

He invites Hooper to agree that vestments are indifferent, not to condemn them as sinful, and then he will ordain him even if he wears street clothes to the ceremony.

Heinrich Bullinger, Pietro Martire Vermigli, and Martin Bucer, while agreeing with Hooper's views, ceased to support him for the pragmatic sake of unity and slower reform.

Because of this publication, his persistent nonconformism, and violations of the terms of his house arrest, Hooper was placed in Thomas Cranmer's custody at Lambeth Palace for two weeks by the Privy Council on 13 January 1551.

[10] On 2 February 1553 Cranmer was ordered to appoint John Knox, a Scot, as vicar of All Hallows, Bread Street in London, placing him under the authority of Ridley.

Knox returned to London in order to deliver a sermon before the king and the court during Lent, after which he refused to take his assigned post.

They set to work to convince several judges to put on the throne Lady Jane Grey, Edward's cousin, instead of Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and a Roman Catholic.

After that, there was time to deal with the religious leaders of the English Reformation and so on 8 March 1554 the Privy Council ordered Cranmer, Ridley, and Hugh Latimer to be transferred to Bocardo prison in Oxford to await trial for heresy.

Profoundly alarmed at the Romewardizing intrusions and efforts at realignment that the movement was attempting to bring into the Church of England, Protestant and Reformed Anglican clergymen raised the funds for erecting the monument, with its highly anti-Roman Catholic inscription, a memorial to over three hundred years of history and reformation.