Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley (29 July 1925 – 22 March 2012 ), was a British nobleman. He was Lord Steward of the Household from 1989 to 2001.

Background, education and military service Ridley was the son of Matthew White Ridley, 3rd Viscount Ridley, and Ursula Lutyens, daughter of Sir Edwin Lutyens. His younger brother Nicholas Ridley, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale was a Conservative Party politician who served as a government minister for nearly all of Margaret Thatcher's years as prime minister.

Matthew Ridley was educated at Eton College and spent several months studying agriculture at King's College, University of Durham (now Newcastle University). The Second World War interrupted his education and he joined the Coldstream Guards, serving in Normandy and Germany in 1944–45. He then studied at Oxford, graduating with a degree in Agriculture from Balliol College in 1948. and as Lord Steward of the Household from 1989 to 2001. He was succeeded by the Duke of Abercorn as Lord Steward in 2001.

He was made a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter in 1992 and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 1994. He retired in 1999 and did not stand for election as a hereditary peer after the House of Lords Act.

Marriage and children Ridley was married on 3 January 1953 to Lady Anne Katharine Gabrielle Lumley (born 16 November 1928, died 2006), daughter of Lawrence Lumley, 11th Earl of Scarbrough. They had four children together:

the Hon. Cecilia Anne Ridley (born 1 December 1953); the Hon. Rose Emily Ridley (13 August 1956 – 24 June 2020), married Owen Paterson in 1980 and had two sons and a daughter; Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley (born 7 February 1958); and the Hon. Mary Victoria Ridley (born 30 November 1962).

Ridley died on 22 March 2012 and was succeeded in the viscountcy by his only son.