ABSTRACT
Date. Sept.–Oct. 1626. Richard Ridding, the subject of this elegy, matriculated from St John's in 1587, took his B.A. in 1591 and his M.A. in 1594, and became Esquire Beadle in 1596. As such one of his duties, referred to by M. (1), was to carry the mace before the Vice-Chancellor on public occasions. Ridding died 26 Sept. 1626 (see L. Miller, N&Q 27 (1980) 323–4). In both 1645 and 1673 the poem is headed Anno aetatis 17, which must mean ‘At seventeen years of age’ not ‘In the seventeenth year of his age’.
