Ryder was the second son of Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby, and his wife, the former Lady Susanna Leveson-Gower, daughter of Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford.
A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he served in the Royal Navy and achieved the rank of Lieutenant.
[1] Ryder married his first cousin, Lady Georgiana Augusta, daughter of Henry Somerset, 6th Duke of Beaufort, in 1825.
A younger son, Henry Stuart Ryder, was a junior officer in the Rifle Brigade and was killed at the Battle of the Great Redan in 1855.
Ryder survived her by fourteen years and died in November 1879, at age 79.