Sir William Ryves (1570âÂÂ1647) 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.
He was born in 1570, the sixth son of John Ryves (1532âÂÂ1587) 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). The extended family circle also included another senior Irish judge of English birth, Sir Robert Napier, the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, whose daughter Anne was the first wife of William's eldest brother Sir John Ryves.
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.
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. This suggests that they already ranked informally ahead of the Serjeant-at-law.
Ryves arrived in Ireland in October 1619. At an unknown date, he entered the King's Inns. As Attorney General, he acted regularly as an extra judge of assize, and sat in the Irish House of Commons as member for Belturbet in the Parliament of 1634-5. He was granted the right to hold a fair and weekly market at Rathsallagh, County Wicklow in 1632: he also acquired an estate in County Carlow, and another at Ballyfermot, near Dublin. He became Treasurer of the King's Inns in 1639 and served as one of its trustees. On Strafford's recommendation Ryves became second justice of the King's Bench in 1636.
Strafford's downfall in 1640âÂÂ41, leading to his execution for treason, did not damage Ryves' career as it did that of some of his colleagues, notably Sir Richard Bolton, the Lord Chancellor. Parliament resolved in May 1641 that Bolton was unfit to preside as Speaker of the Irish House of Lords, and Ryves was appointed to act in his place. He acted in this capacity in 1641âÂÂ2 and again in 1644. For many years after his death his widow Dorothy as his executor pursued a claim for ã3000 due to him as his salary as Speaker.
Ryves' second wife was Dorothy Waldron, daughter of John Waldron or Waldram. She was probably a sister of Elizabeth Waldron, who married William's brother Thomas. She remarried after Ryves' death John Ferrar of Dromore. They had one daughter Dorothy, who married as his third wife Richard Barry, 2nd Earl of Barrymore. In 1656 Lady Ryves ("Dame Dorothy") and Ferrar brought a lawsuit to recover a loan made by her first husband, who had appointed her his sole executor of his will. She was still living in 1675, when she transferred her claim to ã3000, which was due to her first husband as the arrears of his salary as Speaker of the Lords, to her son-in-law Lord Barrymore as a marriage portion for her daughter. She had been seeking repayment of the arrears of salary since 1669 at the latest.National Archives Ms. Carte 160 fol. 34</ref >
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.