Richard Ryves

Sir Richard Ryves (1643–1693) was a seventeenth-century Irish judge who served for several years as Recorder of Dublin, and subsequently as a Baron of the Exchequer.

[1] He was born in Dublin, eldest son of Charles Ryves, examiner of the Court of Chancery (Ireland), who died in 1675, and his wife Jane Ogden.

[1] He lived first at St. Michael's Lane, then at Little Green, adjacent to Capel Street, where his colleague Sir Standish Hartstonge, 1st Baronet was a neighbour.

Ryves, who claimed to be the most senior King's counsel, expected to be appointed to the office and was bitterly disappointed to be passed over in favour of a rather obscure barrister called William Beckett.

This office was a very recent innovation, which had been created especially for Sir John Lyndon, who had been similarly disappointed in his hopes of becoming either Second Serjeant or a High Court judge.

As a Whig and a Protestant, Ryves was inevitably out of favour with the Roman Catholic King James II and was removed from his office of Serjeant in 1687.