RICHARD, an English bishop, was born, according to Wood, at Brighton, but according to others, in Sussex. In 1649, he was admitted sizar in Emmanuel College, Cambridge; in 1652, he took his bachelor's degree; in 1655, he was elected a fellow; and in 1656, he took his degree of master of arts. Having been presented by his college to the vicarage of Stanground, Huntingdonshire, he was ejected for non-conformity in 1662; but conforming soon afterwards, he was, in 1664, presented to the rectory of Raine, in Essex, where he continued until 1674, when he was made rector of St Martin's Outwith, London. In 1681, he was installed into a prebend of Norwich; in 1689, he was made Dean of Peterborough, on which occasion he took the degree of doctor in divinity; and, upon the deprivation of Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, he was promoted to the vacant see. In 1693, he delivered the Boyle Lecture, and afterwards inserted in his Demonstration of the Messias, the discourses preached by him upon that occasion. He also wrote a Commentary on the Five Books of Moses, with a dissertation concerning the author or writer of the said books, and a general argument to each of them, which was published in 1694, in two vols. 8vo. To the first volume is prefixed a dissertation, in which he states and answers all the objections made against Moses being the author of the Pentateuch, and, in particular, replies to one drawn by Leclerc from Genesis (xxxvi. 31), which he treats with some severity. This led to a correspondence between him and Leclerc, which the latter printed in his Bibliothèque Choisié. Dr Kidder likewise took part in the Popish controversy, in the course of which he published, 1. A Second Dialogue between a Catholic Convert and a Protestant, showing why he cannot believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation, though he do firmly believe the doctrine of the Trinity; 2. An Examination of Bellarmine's thirtieth note of the Church on the Confession of Adversaries; 3. The Texts which Papists cite out of the Bible for their Doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass examined; 4. Reflections on a French Testament, printed at Bordeaux in 1686, pretended to be translated out of the Latin by the divines of Louvain. The death of this prelate was sudden and lamentable. In the night between the 26th and 27th of November 1703, he was killed in bed, with his lady, in his palace at Wells, by the fall of a stack of chimneys, occasioned by a violent storm which raged without. Dr Kidder was a clear and learned writer, and accounted one of the best divines of his time.