Ryle was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in April 1881, and began a career of twenty years as a teacher.

[3] From September 1886 to March 1888 Ryle was Principal of St David's College, Lampeter,[4] from when until 1901 he taught at the University of Cambridge as Hulsean Professor of Divinity.

During these years Ryle published a number of books connected with his academic interests, including The Early Narratives of Genesis (1892), The Canon of the Old Testament (1892), and Philo and Holy Scripture (1895).

[1] Ryle was appointed Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria in March 1896,[5] and in December 1898 a Chaplain-in Ordinary to Her Majesty,[6] from which post he resigned in early January 1901.

In 1909 he was chairman of the commission sent to Sweden by the Archbishop of Canterbury to investigate the possibility of closer relations between the English and Swedish churches.

He was installed in Westminster Abbey in April 1911, at a time when the building was being prepared for the coronation of King George V. He was created CVO in 1911.

He wrote to Ryle in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey "amongst the kings" to represent the many hundreds of thousands of Empire dead.

There was initial opposition from King George V (who feared that such a ceremony would reopen the wounds of a recently concluded war) and others but a surge of emotional support from the great number of bereaved families ensured its adoption.