Dudley Ryder (judge)

The Right Honourable Sir Dudley Ryder PC
Solicitor General
In office 1733–1737
Monarch	George II
Prime Minister	Robert Walpole
Preceded by	Charles Talbot
Succeeded by	Sir John Strange
Attorney General
In office 1737–1754
Monarch	George II
Prime Minister	Robert Walpole the Earl of Wilmington Henry Pelham
Preceded by	Sir John Willes
Succeeded by	William Murray
Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench
In office 1754–1756
Monarch	George II
Prime Minister	The Duke of Newcastle
Preceded by	Sir William Lee
Succeeded by	William Murray
Personal details
Born	(1691-11-04)4 November 1691 London, England
Died	25 May 1756(1756-05-25) (aged 64) London, England
Spouse	Anne Newnham
Children	Nathaniel Ryder
Parent(s)	Richard Ryder Elizabeth Marshall
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh

The tomb of Lord Dudley Ryder

Sir Dudley Ryder, PC (4 November 1691 – 25 May 1756) was an English lawyer, writer and politician who sat in the British House of Commons from 1733 until 1754 when he was appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

Early life

Ryder was the second son of Richard Ryder, a draper of Hackney, Middlesex, and his second wife Elizabeth Marshall, daughter of William Marshall of Lincoln's Inn. He studied at a dissenting academy in Hackney and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and Leiden University in The Netherlands. He went to the Middle Temple in 1713 (where he kept a diary from 1715 to 1716, in which he minutely recorded “whatever occurs to me in the day worth observing”). In 1719, he was called to the Bar. He married Anne Newnham, daughter of Nathaniel Newnham of Streatham, Surrey in November 1733.

Career

Ryder was returned as Member of Parliament for St Germans at a by election on 1 March 1733. He was also made Solicitor General by Sir Robert Walpole in 1733. At the 1734 British general election, he switched to Tiverton where he was returned unopposed as MP. He was appointed as Attorney General in 1737. At the creation of the Foundling Hospital in London in 1739 he was one of the founding governors. In 1740, he was knighted. He topped the poll in a contest at the 1741 British general election and was returned unopposed again in 1747. On 2 May 1754 he was made a Privy Councillor and Chief Justice of the King's Bench, a post he held until his death. He did not stand for parliament at the 1754 general election. The King refused his application for a peerage until he had served in office for two years. A patent creating him a peer was signed by the King on 24 May 1756, but Ryder died the following day and was in no position to kiss hands to take it up.

Horace Walpole thought Ryder "a man of singular goodness and integrity; of the highest reputation in his profession, of the lowest in the House, where he wearied the audience by the multiplicity of his arguments; resembling the physician who ordered a medicine to be composed of all the simples in a meadow, as there must be some of them at least that would be proper".

Ryder died leaving one son Nathaniel who became the first Baron Harrowby.

References

• William Matthews (ed.), The Diary of Dudley Ryder 1715-1716 (London, 1939).
• Brenner, Maurice, ‘Discourse and Reality: the many worlds of Dudley Ryder, 1715-1716’ (Ipswich, 2012)

External links

• "Ryder, Dudley (1691-1756)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.