William Ryves

Sir William Ryves (1570–1647) was a barrister and judge, and a member of a distinguished Dorsetshire family. He enjoyed a successful legal career in Ireland, holding office as Attorney-General for Ireland and as a justice of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland). For a time he acted as Deputy to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Family and early career He was born in 1570, the sixth son of John Ryves (1532–1587) of Damory Court, near Blandford, Dorset, and Elizabeth Marvyn (died 1609), daughter of Sir John Marvyn of Fonthill Gifford and his first wife Jane Baskerville of Sherborne. He belonged to a gifted family: one of his brothers, Sir Thomas Ryves, was considered to be the leading expert on ecclesiastical and Admiralty law of his time, and another brother George Ryves was Warden of New College, Oxford. Dr. Bruno Ryves, royal chaplain and later Dean of Windsor, was his first cousin, and Sir John Davies, whom William replaced as Irish Attorney General, was a close connection by marriage (his wife being a great-granddaughter of Sir John Marvyn).

William entered the Middle Temple in 1593 and was called to the Bar in 1600. He was made a Bencher of the Middle Temple in 1619. He lived for some years in Oxford and owned substantial property at St. Giles. His first judicial appointment was as a justice of the Carmarthen circuit.

Irish career William and his brother Thomas both made full use of their family connection with Sir John Davies, and on Davies' recommendation, William succeeded him as Attorney-General for Ireland in 1619 and was given a knighthood. King James I in the patent appointing Ryves noted that this office, and the office of Solicitor-General for Ireland, were invariably the King's own personal choice. He also stressed the importance of both offices, they being the officials in whom above all others the King placed his special trust for the preservation of his revenues and possessions. Unlike Davies he seems to have made no effort as Attorney General to influence Government policy: he has been described as simply "a cog in the administrative machine".

While he had depended on his connection to Sir John Davies (who died late in 1626) for his early advancement, his subsequent promotion was due to the patronage of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, the formidable and virtually all-powerful Lord Deputy of Ireland. On Strafford's recommendation Ryves became second justice of the King's Bench in 1636.

After the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he lost much of his Irish property: he evidently considered moving back to England, but in fact, spent his last years in Dublin. He visited England for the last time in 1643. He died in Dublin in March 1647 and was buried in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Dublin. John, a barrister of Middle Temple;

The Ryves family of Upper Court, County Kilkenny, who died out in the male line at the end of the eighteenth century, seem to have been the last surviving branch of the Irish family. James Ryves, yet another brother of William and Thomas, settled in County Kerry, married a daughter of Thomas Spring of Castlemaine, and left issue.