Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/240

 202 DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

soon as the men became freed from hospital the) made straightway for their English benefactors, a proceeding that continued until peace was de clared. There was one truly unique privilege enjoyed by the English Chaplain at Dresden. Through a special permit from the German Com- mander-in-Chief he was enabled to go over the battlefield, through the lines of the dead, immedi ately after the Sedan, and, being known to the Saxons, he and his wife very easily got into Paris, and to many other places which were inaccessible to people not similarly known. The services rendered by Mr and Mrs Ridley had not been lost sight of in high quarters. Proof of this is found in the fact that, in recognition of the manner in which she had ministered to the sick and wounded soldiers, Mrs Ridley became the recipient of a bronze cross, together with an autograph letter from the King of Saxony.

At other times, for short periods, Mr Ridley held chaplaincies in Italy and France. The year 1872 found him back in England as Vicar of Shelley, near Huddersfield. There he did some valuable parochial work, and, between times, not a little for the C.M.S. The same may also be said, only with greater emphasis, in relation to his subsequent tenure of the living of Mold Green and his charge as Vicar of St Paul s, Huddersfield, where he remained for six years in fact, until asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Tait)

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