Religious Figure. He was part of the 19th-century expansion of both the British empire and the Church of England in North America. Born the son of a schoolmaster, his mother died when he was a child. After attending local schools, he was a school teacher for six years. As a 31-year-old, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge. The same year, he also passed his theological examination and was ordained by the Bishop of Norfolk in 1850. He was appointed incumbent of Essex's Christ Church and during his three-year tenure, he was a very capable and dedicated minister to his congregation. After a decline in his health, he applied for the vacant Hudson's Bay Company chaplaincy at Fort Victoria in Canada and was quickly accepted as the second chaplain early in September of 1854, arriving in 1855. He was appointed superintendent of education without pay, from 1856 until he was replaced in 1865. In 1858, around 30,000 rough and rowdy miners flooded British Columbia's first significant gold rush. Besides the miners, there were thousands of Native Americans. All was very different from his clean and proper English congregations, but he was accommodating to the needs with his Christian evangelical spirit. As a joint collaboration between four of the denominational Protestant churches in Victoria, his most enduring legacy can be one of the founders of the Protestant Orphans' Home. His wife Mary, served on the women's orphan committee. He became the Dean of Christ Church Anglican Cathedral from 1865 to 1874. Dean Cridge was instrumental in the establishment of the first hospital in Victoria in 1858. When he requested two more priest, the church sent him the Right Reverend George Hills. At first the two men were colleagues but he had a major disagreement with the Right Reverend George Hills, Doctor of Divinity and Anglican Lord Bishop of British Columbia in respect to the Anglican Church's "High Church" vs. "Low Church". The dispute ended in an ecclesiastical court and later before the civil court of the province in 1874. Bishop Hills won both cases and promptly asserted his authority by banning him from conducting Anglican services in the Diocese. He left Anglicanism after the theological dispute. This resulted with him joining the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1875, starting a new congregation, and taking 250 members of Hills' congregation. He is credited with building the Church of Our Lord, or "the Cridge Church," in Victoria, which was designated a Canadian Heritage Site in 1999. Starting the same year as the Bishop of the Pacific Coast jurisdiction of the Reform Episcopal Church, he was overseeing Church affairs from San Francisco to Alaska. He resigned this post in 1895 and became a widower in 1905, yet remain an active member of the community of Victoria until his death.