Richard Claridge

Richard Claridge (1649 – 28 April 1723) was an English Anglican priest and Quaker convert.

Life The son of William Claridge of Farnborough, Warwickshire, he was educated at Farnborough grammar school. In 1666 he became a student at Balliol College, Oxford, moving two years later to St. Mary Hall. While at the university he gained the reputation of being an "orator, philosopher, and Grecian". He graduated B.A. in 1670, and in the same year was ordained a deacon, being licensed to the curacy of Wardington.

Two years later Claridge was ordained priest, and in the following year was presented to the living of Peopleton in Worcestershire. He was there for nearly twenty years, and most of the time kept a grammar school. In 1689 a sermon by Richard Baxter made him dissatisfied with episcopacy, and a visit to London, during which he attended nonconformist services and inquired into church customs, increased this distaste; but he retained his living till 1691. Joseph Besse, his biographer, states that he then became a Baptist. In 1702, while a schoolmaster at Barking, he opposed a church rate and was excused from paying it; but for the next collection his goods were distrained. and wrote an epistle for The Enormous Sin of Covetousness Detected (1708) by William Crouch His posthumous works were collected and published with a memoir prefixed in 1726 under the title of The Life and Posthumous Works of Richard Claridge, being memoirs and manuscripts relating to his experiences and progress in religion: his changes of opinion and reasons for them.