cons. 30 Aug. 1691 bp. of BATH AND WELLS
First sat 30 Oct. 1691; last sat 5 Feb. 1703
bap. 9 Feb. 1634, 8th ch. of William Kidder (d.1671), saddler, of E. Grinstead, Suss. and Elizabeth of Wickenden (Wichenden) (d. c.1648); educ. g.s. (tutor, Reiner Harman); Emmanuel, Camb. matric. 1649 (Samuel Cradock, tutor), BA 1653, fell. 1655-?9, MA 1656, DD 1690; ord. 1658. m. bef. 1662, Elizabeth (surname unknown) (d.1703), 3s. d.v.p., 3da. (1 d.v.p.), 3ch. d.v.p.1 d. 26 Nov. 1703; will 25 Feb. 1695, pr. 14 Feb. 1704.2
Chap. William and Mary 1689-91.3
Vic. Stanground, Hunts. 1659-62 (ejected); rect. Rayne, Essex 1664-74, St Martin Outwich, London 1674-91; preacher, Rolls Chapel 1674-81; preb. Norwich 1681-91; dean, Peterborough 1689-91.4
Mbr. SPG.5
Associated with: E. Grinstead, Suss.; Wandsworth, Mdx.6
Likenesses: oil on canvas, aft. Mary Beale, aft. 1691, Bishop’s Palace and Gardens, Wells, Somerset; oil on canvas, style of Charles Jervas, aft. 1691, Wells Town Hall.
Richard Kidder, according to his autobiography (which is more of an apologia for the many controversies in his diocese in which he was later involved), was the penultimate child in the large brood of nine children of William Kidder, a man ‘of great diligence and industry’, who ‘made a shift with a little estate of his own ... to give his children a decent education’. His mother he described as ‘a woman of great sanctity and piety’, who had ‘the name of a puritan fixed upon her’. As his father was unable to provide for his education at university, Kidder was intended as an apothecary, but through the efforts of two friends, apparently London ministers, he was able to enter Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1649. Though tutored at the puritan-leaning Emmanuel by the nonconformist Samuel Cradock, about whom Kidder later claimed, ‘it is hardly possible that one man can owe to another more than I do to him’, Kidder consciously took the decision to take episcopal orders, rather than Presbyterian. Ralph Brownrigg†, the deprived bishop of Exeter, ordained him in a private house in 1658 and the following year Kidder entered into a living in the gift of the college, the vicarage of Stanground in Huntingdonshire. Despite his episcopal orders, and his refusal to sign the Engagement or the Covenant, he was still ejected from that living on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1662, because he refused to subscribe to the newly amended prayer book without seeing a copy of it first; a copy was not made available to him until three weeks after his ejectment. He conformed soon afterwards and through the mediation of a university friend was able in October 1664 to obtain the rectory of Rayne in Essex, in the gift of Arthur Capell, earl of Essex.7
From 1674 London became the centre of his ecclesiastical career. In that year William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, offered Kidder the living of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in his gift as dean of St Paul’s. Kidder remained in charge of the parish only briefly and refused to be instituted, as he was unwilling to enforce kneeling at communion on reluctant parishioners. The Presbyterian Sir Harbottle Grimston‡, master of the rolls, did prevail upon him to accept the post of preacher at the Rolls Chapel and shortly afterwards he also accepted from the Merchant Taylors’ Company the small and poor living of St Martin Outwich, neighbour to his rejected parish of St Helen’s. With these London commitments, he took up permanent residence in the capital and began to gain a glowing reputation as a pastor, preacher and scholar, which brought him the patronage of many leading families. It also brought him tragedy. Three of his children died during an outbreak of smallpox in 1680.
Kidder was concerned with the education of many of the children of the City elite and placed many of them in both Merchant Taylors’ School and then Emmanuel College. In particular he was the tutor and patron of the future nonjuror George Harbin and of William Dawes, the future archbishop of York. Kidder later named the latter’s stepfather, the naval official Sir Anthony Deane‡ as one of his executors. Kidder became most closely integrated with the Finch family, acquiring his most potent patrons in Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, and his son Daniel Finch, later 2nd earl of Nottingham, nephew to Kidder’s earlier benefactor, Mary Rich, the widowed countess of Warwick. In London Kidder also became closely connected with John Tillotson, later archbishop of Canterbury, and he became integrated into an influential body of prominent London clerics, many of whom owed their position to Nottingham’s influence and who were later to serve as bishops – John Sharp, the future archbishop of York, Edward Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester, Thomas Tenison, another future archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, who would become bishop of Norwich, and Simon Patrick, later bishop of Ely. Kidder was also particularly close to leading figures in the movement for the ‘reformation of manners’, particularly Edward Fowler, then vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate and a future bishop of Gloucester, and to the famous German ‘pathetic preacher’ at the Savoy, Anthony Horneck, whose eulogistic biography he wrote after Horneck’s death in 1697.8
On 16 Sept. 1681 Kidder was, through Nottingham’s patronage, appointed a canon of Norwich at the same time as John Sharp, Nottingham’s chaplain, was made dean of that chapter. Kidder refused several additional livings over the next four years including the lectureship at Ipswich, which he was twice offered, by both Charles II and James II. He was tempted by this latter offer but seems to have been keen to maintain his London connections and preferred to retain his living in the City. With the accession of James II, Kidder defended the Church of England against the threat of Catholicism both in the pulpit and in print. He joined with the other clerics in London of the Nottingham-Sharp circle in publishing and preaching against the teachings of Rome and was particularly concerned by the situation in Norwich which he felt was the town in greatest danger of apostasy. After the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, one of them, William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, stayed at Kidder’s London residence for several weeks as it was thought ‘the danger was not over ... though they were acquitted in Westminster Hall’. Nevertheless, Kidder later in his memoirs felt the need to justify some of his behaviour in the final months of James’s reign, particularly his unpublished sermon of 15 Jan. 1688 which seemed to assent to the king’s policies.9
In the autumn of 1689 Nottingham and Tillotson, clerk of the closet from March 1689, promoted their colleagues among the London clergy to ecclesiastical positions and Kidder was appointed dean of Peterborough and royal chaplain. He was also placed on the commission of ten bishops and 20 clergy assigned to make alterations in the prayer book and liturgy to aid in the comprehension of Dissenters into the national Church. Kidder supported Nottingham and Tillotson in their plan for comprehension, but this quickly ran into opposition and Roger Morrice recorded that even when Kidder argued for changes to some of the ‘minuter things in the Commons Prayer’, it met with ‘great opposition from all the rest present’ in the commission.10 In 1691 Kidder was considered as the replacement for the nonjuror Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, but Tillotson doubted whether he would accept ‘because the bishopric is very poor and so is he’.11 Reluctant to join the episcopate, Kidder equally shrank from the prospect of promotion to the see of Bath and Wells, not least since the nonjuror Thomas Ken, the incumbent bishop, had orchestrated a strong base of local support and refused to go quietly. In the end, Tillotson bullied Kidder into accepting Bath and Wells with a peremptory note announcing his appointment making it impossible for him to refuse. Even at this stage Kidder claimed that his nomination placed him
in such trouble and consternation as I have seldom been in during my whole life. I saw the strait I was then in. If I took this bishopric, I well knew I must meet with trouble and envy. If I refused, I knew the consequence of that also, especially Dr Beveridge having so lately done it.12
The reference to the fate of William Beveridge, later bishop of St Asaph, whose decision to refuse Bath and Wells led him to be overlooked for promotion to a bishopric until the following reign, suggests that at least part of his consternation resulted from a fear of stifling his promotion prospects. He had certainly already let it be known that he was desirous of becoming a bishop and ‘would not be so stiff as absolutely to refuse a bishopric’, although he had excepted Bath.13 By 4 June 1691 it was common knowledge that Kidder was the new candidate; his patronage was increasingly in demand as the queen issued directions for his election. On 30 Aug. 1691, at the age of 57, he was consecrated in St Mary-le-Bow with Robert Grove, bishop of Chichester and John Hall, bishop of Bristol, before going to Wells to be installed in person.14
He returned to the capital in October for the winter. On 31 Oct. 1691, nine days into the session of 1691-2, Kidder took his seat in the House to take the requisite oaths as bishop of Bath and Wells. He attended half of the session’s sitting days during which he was named to 13 committees on legislation. He was one of the 14 bishops to sign the petition of late December 1691 asking the king for a proclamation against impiety and vice and for a more rigorous implementation of the laws against blasphemy.15 On 2 Jan. 1692 the House ordered him to preach in Westminster Abbey at the end of the month, in commemoration of Charles I’s martyrdom. On 1 Feb. the House formally thanked Kidder for his sermon delivered two days previously and ordered its publication.16 Near the end of the session, on 22 Feb., Kidder was appointed a reporter for the conference on the small tithes bill.
Kidder returned to Wells in the summer and began his primary visitation, issuing strong pastoral directions to the clergy on the need to instigate moral reformation in the diocese.17 Kidder’s government of the see of Bath and Wells was fraught with difficulty and conflict from the start. His autobiography contains a litany of confrontations not helped by his unpopularity with the gentry in Somerset where a predominantly Tory elite were still loyal to Ken. Ken himself encouraged this attitude and himself saw Kidder as a ‘latitudinarian traditour’, a ‘hireling’, and a ‘stranger ravaging the flock’, who ‘instead of keeping the flock within the fold encouraged them to stray’. Kidder’s officious approach to residence, procedure and discipline further rankled with Ken’s allies on the diocesan chapter. The chapter disliked Kidder’s favouring, and even ordination, of former Dissenters, and objected vehemently to Nicholas Mallarhé, a former nonconformist. Kidder’s own account of the matter makes it clear that the canons objected to Mallarhé because he was not a graduate, had insufficient testimonials and, crucially, was unwilling to preach a recantation sermon. Whilst he mentioned that Mallarhé was ‘bred beyond sea’, there is no indication that part of Mallarhé’s problem was (as suggested by Ken’s biographer) that he was ‘a West Indian, with negro blood in him’.18
Kidder was in the capital again by 5 Nov. 1692, as that day he preached to the king and queen a sermon of thanksgiving at Whitehall for deliverance from ‘cruel and bloodthirsty men’. He did not sit in the House until 10 Nov. 1692 and again proceeded to attend just under half (47 per cent) of the sittings of the 1692-3 session, during which he was named to six committees on private estate bills. Although he was marked as present on 31 Dec. 1692, his vote on the motion to commit the place bill was not recorded by Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, suggesting that he may have chosen to abstain. He was present on 3 Jan. 1693 when he did join both Tillotson and Nottingham in voting against the passage of the bill. At the same time it was predicted that he would support the bill to divorce the Protestant Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, from his Catholic wife, but again he appears to have abstained from the vote on whether to read the bill on 2 Jan. 1693, for his name does not appear in Ailesbury’s list, although he is marked as present in the Journal. He ended his winter sojourn in the capital in some controversy when he preached the Lenten sermon at Whitehall on 12 Mar., two days before the end of the session. He chose for his text Matthew 5:43, ‘to speak of praying for our enemies, and did more particularly consider those places in the book of Psalms where the Psalmist seems to pray against them. I gave that account of that matter which I judged was agreeable to truth’. However, such sentiments did not agree with a government engaged in a long war with France and prompted attacks on him and his views.19
There were other areas where Kidder’s views were not greeted with universal acclaim. John Evelyn resented that Sir John Rotheram forced Evelyn and the other trustees to name Kidder as the Boyle lecturer for both 1693 and 1694, the second and third year of the lecture series, instead of the classicist Richard Bentley, who had acquitted himself so well in the first lecture in 1692. Evelyn attended Kidder’s lecture on 2 Jan. 1693 where he was ‘asserting the doctrine of Christ, against the Jews, with the usual topics, but speaking nothing extraordinary’.20 On 7 Nov., after another turbulent summer in Wells, Kidder arrived for the first day of the new session but a week later was formally excused attendance at a call of the House. He, nevertheless, appeared three days later but in the remaining days of the session, of whose sittings he attended 41 per cent until the prorogation on 25 Apr. 1694, he was only named to four committees on legislation. At this time he was preparing for publication his Notes on the Pentateuch and the ‘drawing up the prefaces, and the dissertation, and preparing it for the press had taken me up some time when I was attending on the Parliament’. On 9 Apr. he preached before the mayor and aldermen of the City at St Bride’s church on the plight of the poor and after the end of the session he preached, on 23 May, the fast sermon at Whitehall on his favourite theme of moral reformation, which was subsequently published.21
Kidder recounted that he ‘met with a great many troubles’ in 1694, including problems with one of his archdeacons, Edwin Sandys, who refused to recognize Kidder as his bishop.22 Kidder arrived four weeks into the session of 1694-5, on 14 Dec. 1694, and attended 27 per cent of the sittings, being named to only two committees on legislation. His diocesan troubles followed him to the capital, when a Mr Doble, a vicar he had suspended for his public Jacobite statements and his refusal to say the prayers for the reigning monarchs, followed him to Westminster seeking reinstatement.23 Kidder was absent from the House from 3 Jan. to 27 Mar. 1695, but from his return in April Kidder sat regularly in the House until the prorogation of 3 May. He did not attend the first session of the new Parliament in 1695-6. At this point he was engaged in fractious dispute with his dean Robert Creighton (son of Robert Creighton, the former bishop of Bath and Wells) over the irregular election of canons over the previous few years. That kept Kidder occupied enough but in addition, as he recorded, ‘I continued at Wells the following winter [1695-6], not being able to go to the Parliament for want of health’. The House was well aware of this, for on 26 Feb. 1696 Kidder was excused from having to attend the House to sign the Association.24 During the summer and autumn of 1696 Kidder learned of further allegations of Jacobite practices against Sandys. Hoping to raise this troublesome case before the king and archbishop, Kidder made an effort to travel to the capital to attend the session due to open on 20 Oct. 1696. As soon as he arrived though, he was stricken with another attack of the gout and was not able to attend the House for the first eight weeks. On 14 Nov. 1696 the House peremptorily ordered him to appear by 30 Nov. in order to take part in the proceedings against Sir John Fenwick‡, but on 8 Dec. his absence was excused, he ‘being not well’. According to Kidder, he was so determined to participate in the proceedings against Fenwick that he was borne in a chair to the House until he was actually able to walk unaided from his lodgings nearby in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey to the Lords’ chamber. His own statement is corroborated by his attendance record in the proceedings on the Fenwick attainder bill. An unsourced, but often repeated, anecdote that seems first to have appeared in 1806 recounts that Kidder may have summoned the strength to come to the House because he had been peremptorily ordered by the government to attend to vote for the Fenwick attainder bill, being unsubtly reminded to ‘consider whose bread you eat’. To this Kidder responded to the court’s messenger, ‘I eat no man’s bread but poor Dr Ken’s, and if he will take the oaths, he shall have it again. I did not think of going to the Parliament, but now I shall undoubtedly go, and vote contrary to your commands’.25 Kidder sat in the House for the first time in that session on 14 December. Three days later the House once again gave him leave to be absent, ‘being indisposed’. Nevertheless, he ignored this dispensation and struggled into the House over the following days to register his opposition to the Fenwick attainder bill, in defiance of the court. On 18 Dec. he voted against the second reading of the bill and he later signed the protest against that decision. James Vernon‡ described Kidder’s vote (with those of Sharp of York and Gilbert Ironside, bishop of Hereford) as ‘more remarkable than the rest, it not being expected’, perhaps again reflecting the complacency of the court that the bishop ‘knew whose bread he ate’. He was again in the House on 22 Dec. 1696, when ‘the passing of the bill was debated anew, and all was said on both sides which the matter would bear’. The following day he was one of only nine bishops to vote against the attainder – as did his erstwhile patron, Nottingham. Kidder provided his most detailed account of his involvement in the House in his narrative of the proceedings on this bill, in which he set out his own reasons for opposing it:
1) It was a matter of blood, and I could not vote for the bill without two credible witnesses and full proof. 2) I feared it would be an ill precedent. For if the present law [the Treason Trials Act of 1696], might be broke in upon now it might be of ill consequence in after reigns. And 3) because I saw no necessity at all in the present case, why we should use extraordinary means. The government could not fear Sir John Fenwick, and I was (and am still) of opinion that such methods ought not to be used unless upon exigences and dangers that were very extraordinary. I am sure I went against all my worldly interest in this vote, but I went according to my conscience.26
As he explicitly recorded, he returned to the House on 7 Jan. 1697 to put his name to the formal protest in the Journal, complete with its own extensive reasons against the passage of the bill. He continued to attend regularly until he was, on 27 Jan. 1697, again given leave to go to the country for his health, and this time he took the House up on its offer and retreated from the House from that day, missing the final three months of the session. In May 1697 he informed a friend that he had been ‘dangerously ill’, but he continued to manage his diocese, pursuing clergy with forged orders.27
He did not attend the next four parliamentary sessions and on 1 June 1698 his proxy with Edward Fowler of Gloucester was registered for the last weeks of the 1697-8 session. He may have registered his proxy in the succeeding three sessions, of 1698-9, 1699-1700 and the Parliament of 1701, but the proxy registers for those sessions are now lost. Kidder remained at Wells during this long period, complaining ‘how piety decays, and how rampant both vice and popery are’ and urging that ‘’tis time for this poor Church of England to be awakened’.28 To this end he became involved in the formation of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and other similar organizations for the reformation of manners.29 On 20 June 1700 he returned to the House for the first time since 27 Jan. 1697, the only bishop present for the prorogation that day, before Parliament was dissolved on 19 Dec. 1700. He did not attend the House for any remaining sittings under William III.
Kidder reappeared in Parliament on 28 Apr. 1702, after the accession of Anne, but still he only attended a further seven sittings of that Parliament, which was dissolved on 2 July. He returned to the House for the following session of 1702-3, on 9 Nov., on which day he was named to the committee to compose an address congratulating the queen on the recovery of Prince George, of Denmark, duke of Cumberland. He attended for little more than ten per cent of the session and the dates of his sittings show a clear concern with the occasional conformity bill. On 3 Dec. 1702 he was present for the second reading of the bill and its committal to the whole House. Kidder voted for a wrecking amendment proposed by John Somers, Baron Somers which would limit the scope of the bill to those affected by the 1673 Test Act, thus removing corporation officials from its penalties. A group of bishops led by Tenison of Canterbury (and which appears to have included Kidder) voted for the measure, while ten Tory-inclined bishops, led by Sharp of York, opposed it.30 Kidder registered his proxy to William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle on 11 Jan. 1703 and Nicolson used it that day during the debates on the bill for Prince George. Nottingham predicted that the proxy would be used to support the occasional conformity bill but by 16 Jan., with the debates on the House’s controversial amendments to the bill imminent, Kidder had second thoughts about the wisdom of entrusting his proxy to Nicolson and wrote to him that morning asking that his proxy might be superseded. The clerk of the House, informed of Kidder’s request, responded that the proxy could be vacated only by his own attendance. Nicolson conveyed the ruling to Kidder at his Kensington lodgings ‘and immediately he posted to us, though (that very morning) he had assured Mr Richardson, that he could not for a world come to Town.’ His appearance that day is noted in the manuscript minutes, but he is not included in the attendance register in the official Journal, which suggests it must have been compiled earlier in the day, perhaps at or about prayers. In addition, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, included Kidder among those ‘good’ voters on that day, that is, those voting for the ‘wrecking’ amendments to the bill, while Nicolson of Carlisle, Kidder’s putative proxy holder until his appearance in the House, was considered ‘bad’, voting in support of the bill. In the event, Kidder’s vote in person may have proved crucial in seeing through the penalties clause which eventually scuttled the occasional conformity bill in the Commons.31
On 5 Feb. 1703 Kidder attended the House for the last time and returned to Wells. During the ‘great storm’ of 26 Nov. 1703, his troubled tenure as bishop of Bath and Wells ended suddenly when he and his wife were crushed in bed by a falling chimney stack.32 They were buried in Wells Cathedral on 14 Dec., leaving only two daughters, Susanna and Anne. Susanna married Sir Richard Everard‡, while Anne died unmarried.33 According to his will, by the end of his life Kidder had acquired property in Essex, Sussex, Hertfordshire and Somerset. He was also able to bequeath over £2,000 in dowries for his two daughters, while a further £100 was left to friends, relatives and the poor of Wells. The bishop’s trustees, apart from his clerical friends Anthony Horneck (deceased) and Peter Fisher, included Sir Anthony Deane, stepfather to Kidder’s old student, William Dawes. Kidder’s death aroused little compassion in his predecessor Thomas Ken, who attributed the ‘great storm’ to divine retribution and who encouraged George Hooper, a man more to his liking, to accept translation from St Asaph.
B.A./C.G.D.L.- 1 Life of Richard Kidder ed. A.E. Robinson (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxvii) pp. ix, xi, 11, 16, 29; Suss. Arch. Soc. ix. 129-32; Regs. of St Martin Outwich, 5, 6, 104-5; TNA, PROB 11/474.
- 2 PROB 11/474.
- 3 Life of Kidder, 48, 73.
- 4 Ibid. 6-25, 48-49.
- 5 CSP Dom. 1700-2, p. 358
- 6 Life of Kidder, 24.
- 7 Ibid. 1-17; Add. 40630, f. 295.
- 8 Life of Kidder, 18-34; R. Kidder, Life of the Reverend Anthony Horneck (1698).
- 9 Life of Kidder, 24-25, 35-39, 44-47; Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 328; CSP Dom. 1683-4, p. 144.
- 10 Life of Kidder, 191; CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 271, 281; Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 221.
- 11 CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 50.
- 12 Life of Kidder, 62.
- 13 Ibid. 61.
- 14 Ibid. 61-63; Essays in Modern Church History ed. Bennet and Walsh, 121-2; CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 452, 507; 1691-2, p. 50; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 371.
- 15 Add. 70015, f. 276.
- 16 R. Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells’ Sermon before the House of Peers on Jan. the 30th 1691/2 (1692).
- 17 Life of Kidder, 64-73; Charge of Richard, Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, to the Clergy of his Diocese (1693), 14 et seq.
- 18 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 60, 138; Life of Kidder, 75-98 et seq.
- 19 Life of Kidder, 73-74; R. Kidder, Sermon Preached before the King and Queen at Whitehall, the 5th Nov. 1692 (1693); Sermon Preached before the King and Queen at Whitehall, Mar. 12 1692 (1693).
- 20 Evelyn Diary, v. 123, 126, 161.
- 21 Life of Kidder, 83-84; R. Kidder, Sermon ... preached before the ... Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen ... Apr. 9 1694 (1694); Sermon preached before the Queen at Whitehall, May 23 1694 (1694).
- 22 Life of Kidder, 84-94.
- 23 Ibid. 94-98.
- 24 HMC Lords, ii. 206; Life of Kidder, 99-128.
- 25 M. Noble, Biographical Hist. of England, ii. 101n.
- 26 Life of Kidder, 132-3; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 134.
- 27 Add. 4274, ff. 46, 48; Life of Kidder, 128-9.
- 28 Add. 27997, f. 31.
- 29 CSP Dom. 1700-2, p. 358.
- 30 Nicolson, London Diaries, 137-8.
- 31 BIHR, xli. 187-9; Nicolson, London Diaries, 166, 174.
- 32 Lansd. 987, f. 162.
- 33 Suss. Arch. Soc. ix. 133.