RIDDELL, Sir Peter (1576-1641), of Pilgrim Street, St Andrew, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Riddell’s family had belonged to Newcastle’s mercantile elite since at least the early sixteenth century.20Hist. Northumb. iv. 284. Like his father, Riddell served as sheriff, alderman and mayor of the town and occupied a lucrative position at the apex of the Tyne Valley coal trade. He was one of the handful of men that effectively controlled this trade and was twice elected governor of the Hostmen’s Company – the cartel of coal-shippers that dominated the region’s economy.21CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 173; 1633-4, pp. 66, 497; Howell, Newcastle, 3. So powerful had Riddell and his fellow Hostmen become by 1620 that the royal surveyor of coals was eager to proceed against them for abusing their monopoly to the detriment of the crown and the public interest.22CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 173.

Riddell’s return for Newcastle to the 1624, 1626 and 1628 Parliaments is testament to his great influence in the town; although his name figured prominently in a petition presented to the king from many of the freemen in 1633, complaining about corrupt practices among the governing elite.23SP16/245/32, ff. 64-5, 66; Howell, Newcastle, 55-8. He came under the spotlight again in 1636, when the attorney general brought a case against him for encroaching upon the king’s coal mines in Benwell.24E134/12CHAS1/EAST25; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 419; Hist. Northumb. xiii. 229-30. Nevertheless, when the crown negotiated a deal with the Hostmen in 1637 for the purchase of coals on favourable terms, Riddell was one of the parties to the agreement.25E214/49; Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle ed. Dendy, 77-8.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Riddell and his half-brother and fellow aldermen Thomas Lyddell were returned for Newcastle – Riddell taking the senior place.26Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. Soon after his election, Riddell expressed surprise that ‘no instructions were given to the burgesses for their proceedings, and thereupon should say that the fault must be either for that they [the Newcastle voters] supposed them too wise or otherwise did undervalue them’.27CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 603. 603. His comments prompted some of the town’s puritans to petition the common council for instructions enjoining Riddell and Lyddell to declare against Laudian innovations and ‘to stand out for the liberties and freedom of the subject’.28CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 601; Howell, Newcastle, 113. There is no evidence that Riddell was complicit in this petition, although he had been on amicable terms with at least one of the town’s puritan ministers, Robert Jennison.29Bodl. Tanner 73, f. 437; Howell, Newcastle, 87, 114; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir Peter Riddell’. According to Jennison, however, Riddell was ‘wholly for Mr Alvey [Yelvard Alvey, the town’s Arminian lecturer]’ in matters of religion.30Bodl. Tanner 71, f. 136v. One of Newcastle’s MPs in the Long Parliament, Sir Henry Anderson, had once accused Riddell of having no religious convictions beyond outward conformism to the ‘religion the king is of, whatsoever that be’.31SP14/86/125, f. 221v.

Riddell failed to act upon the 1640 petitioners’ agenda, receiving no committee appointments in the Short Parliament and making only one recorded speech – in a minor debate on whether mayors could sit as MPs.32Aston’s Diary, 3. That the royal governor of Newcastle during the second bishops’ war, Edward Conway, 2nd Viscount Conway, praised his zeal in the king’s service indicates that Riddell, whatever his religious sympathies, was not part of the pro-Covenanter interest in the town.33CSP Dom. 1640, p. 562, He apparently did not stand for Newcastle in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640 – very probably because the town’s capture by the Scots in the second bishops’ war had undermined the power of the municipal oligarchy.34Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’.

Riddell died in the spring of 1641 and was buried at St Nicholas, Newcastle, on 18 April.35St Nicholas par. reg. He left the bulk of his estate to his widow and his four surviving daughters.36Durham UL, DPR/I/1/1641/R2/1-2. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.