Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/298

 carried with him copies of documents in which forty peers had given their adhesion to the conspiracy; the originals he handed to Don Guerau. Armed with these papers, he left London on 24 March 1571. His departure was known to the English government, but Cecil believed that he was still working in Elizabeth's interest.

Arrived at Brussels early in April, Ridolfi explained to Alva the plan of invasion; he estimated that eight thousand Spanish troops were needed. Alva received the suggestion cautiously. Before he left Brussels for Rome, Ridolfi sent by the hand of Charles Baillie [q. v.] three letters in cipher addressed respectively to the bishop of Ross, the Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Lumley, describing the interview with Alva. By a happy chance Baillie was arrested at Dover, and the letters found upon him. Although they were undecipherable for the moment, Baillie's confession opened the eyes of the English government to the character of Ridolfi's mission, and they gradually began to unravel the threads of his conspiracy. Meanwhile Ridolfi delivered his commissions to Pius V in conclave in May. The pope was encouraging, and, with a papal message in favour of his project, Ridolfi reached Spain towards the end of June. Philip entered with zest into the scheme. Inviting him to a cabinet council in July, he questioned him if it were feasible to assassinate Elizabeth. Ridolfi judged such an act to be practicable, and Philip finally determined that, as soon as the queen was killed, Alva should cross the Channel in support of a great rising of English catholics. Ridolfi proposed to seek further aid in Portugal; but Philip ordered him to return to Brussels to advise Alva and act under his orders. Ridolfi wrote enthusiastically of his success to Norfolk, Mary Stuart, and the bishop of Ross; but the letters were addressed under cover to Don Guerau, and never passed out of his hands. For when they were delivered in London in September, Elizabeth's ministers had, by a series of fortunate accidents, obtained all the information they needed, and the Duke of Norfolk, with the bishop of Ross and others, was under arrest. This disheartening intelligence reached Ridolfi at Paris, whence he wrote a final letter to Queen Mary on 30 Sept., declaring that he had incurred the suspicion of Elizabeth, and that his return to London was impossible (State Papers, Scotland, 1509–1603, ii. 905). Under the circumstances Alva declined to move, and, although Ridolfi complained to the pope that something might yet be done, his patrons recognised that his plot had egregiously failed.

Ridolfi retired to Italy. Pius V conferred on him senatorial rank at Rome, and is said to have sent him (before his death on 1 May 1572) on an embassy to Portugal, but he settled finally at Florence. In 1578 he was temporarily admitted to the senate there, in the absence of an elder brother, Giovanfrancesco, and in 1600 he became a senator in his own right. He died at Florence on 18 Feb. 1612.

[Authorities cited; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1569–71, and Simancas Archives; Mecatti's Storia Genealogica della Nobilità e Cittadinanze di Firenze, Naples, 1754, i. 132, 208–9; Froude's Hist.; Lingard's Hist.; Strype's Annals; Camden's Annals.] 

RIDPATH, GEORGE (d. 1726), whig journalist, seems to have been born in Berwickshire, and to have remained with his mother at Colbrandspath, where he was educated, until he went to Edinburgh University. His father may have been George Readpath, who inherited land from his father, Thomas, in 1654. Ridpath himself claimed connection with the Gordons. In 1681 he was tutor, or servant, at Edinburgh to the sons of a Mr. Gray, and took an active part in the burning of the pope in effigy by the students; the clerk to the council wrote that Ridpath ‘was not then a boy, but a fellow come to years.’ He was in irons for some days, and proclaimed that he was suffering for the protestant religion. He was charged with threatening to burn the provost's house, but after five weeks' imprisonment he was banished the country (The Scots Episcopal Innocence, 1694, pp. 52–6). Abandoning a design to enter the Scottish ministry, he went to London to seek a livelihood by his pen.

In 1687 Ridpath published a new method of shorthand, ‘Shorthand yet Shorter,’ with a dedication to Philip, lord Wharton, under whose roof the book had been written, while Ridpath was ‘one of his lordship's domestics.’ The author, who was to be heard of upon the Scots' Walk at exchange-time most Saturdays, also undertook to give oral lessons in shorthand. A second edition of his manual appeared in 1696 (, Bibl. of Shorthand, p. 193). Soon after the revolution he was an active London journalist (, State Papers, p. 364), and in 1693, writing under the name of Will Laick, he made a violent attack on the episcopal party in Scotland in ‘An Answer to the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence,’ and ‘A Continuation of the Answer.’ These were attacked, with equal virulence, in Dr. Monro's ‘Apology for the Clergy of Scotland’ [see, (d. 1715?)], and ‘The Spirit of Calumny and Slander examined, chastised, and exposed,