The ?Candida Navis?, or White Ship was wrecked on the Norman coast, on 25th November 1120, when William and Richard the Kings? sons, Adela their sister, Richard Earl of Chester, the Countess Maud and one hundred and eighty of the noblest of the youth of England perished. Amongst these was Geoffrey Ridel, the Lord of Drayton, whose widow subsequently founded the Benedictine Monastery at Canwell.
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Geoffrey Ridel, ( d. 1120), judge, was in 1106 sent as a commissioner, with Ralf Basset and other leading men, to settle a controversy as to the right of sanctuary at Ripon. He also witnessed a charter of Henry I at Cornbury and one of the Count of Meulan, which must be previous to 1112. He was one of the assessors in a trial held before the queen at Winchester between 1108 and 1113, and a witness to a charter granted by Henry I before his departure from England in 1116.
Drowned in the White Ship disaster in 1120, he is referred to by Henry of Huntingdon, in his De Contemptu Mundi, as justiciarium totius Angli (but one of the texts omits the words).
His wife was Geva, stated by Dugdale to have been a legitimate daughter of Hugh, Earl of Chester, but her legitimacy is not probable. In her widowhood, during the reign of Stephen, she founded Canwell Priory, Staffordshire, speaking in her charter of Randulf, earl of Chester, as her kinsman. By her Geoffrey left a daughter and heir, Maud, whose hand the king bestowed on Richard, son and heir of Ralf Basset , with her father's lands, at the request of Earl Randulf. These lands lay largely in Leicestershire, where Richard and his wife founded the priory of Laund. A brother of Geoffrey, Mathew, was abbot of Peterborough in 1103 for about a year.
Geoffrey Ridel (d. 1189), Bishop of Ely, was probably his great-nephew.

Sources
Abingdon Cartulary and Ramsey Cartulary (Rolls Ser.); Monasticon Anglicanum ; Dugdale's Baronage ; Ordericus Vitalis (Societe de l'Histoire de France); Sloane Charters (Brit. Mus.); Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls Ser.); Wharton's Anglia Sacra : Hunter's Magnus Rotulus (Record Commission).
Published in Dictionary of National Biography, Contributor J. H. Round. PUBLISHED 1896

• Married:

1. Maud Ridel