Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ryves, Bruno
RYVES, BRUNO (1596-1677), dean of Windsor, son of Thomas, and grandson of John Ryves of Damory Court, Dorset, was born in 1596, and educated at Oxford, subscribing as a clerk of New College in 1610. Sir Thomas Ryves [q. v.] was his first cousin. He graduated B.A. in 1616, and in the following year became a clerk of Magdalen, proceeding M.A. 9 June 1619, B.D. 20 June 1632, and D.D. 25 June 1639. He was admitted of Gray's Inn in 1634. In the meantime he was instituted to the vicarage of Stanwell in Middlesex, where he made a name by his 'florid' preaching (Wood), obtaining in September 1628 the additional benefice of St. Martin-le-Vintry. About 1640 he became chaplain to Charles I. The inhabitants of Stanwell petitioned against him in July 1642, and he was forthwith deprived of his benefices, and a parliamentary preacher appointed in his stead. 'With his wife and four children and all his family he was (according to Walker) taken out of doors, all his goods seized, and all that night lay under a hedge in the wet and cold. Next day my Lord Arundel, hearing of this barbarous usage done to so pious a gentleman, sent his coach with men and horses,' and Ryves was entertained for some time at Wardour Castle. A patent of June 1646 created him dean of Chichester, but he remained in seclusion and dependent upon charity at Shafton in Dorset until after the king's death, when he made at least one journey abroad, bearing to Charles II some money which had been collected among his adherents. Upon the Restoration he petitioned for the vicarage of St. Giles's, Cripplegate; but better preferment was in store for him. He was in July 1660 installed dean of Chichester and master of the hospital there; he was also sworn chaplain-in-ordinary to the king, and appointed dean of Windsor (and Wolverhampton), being installed on 3 Sept. 1660. He became scribe of the order of the Garter in the following January, and was shortly afterwards presented to the rectories of Haseley, Oxon., and Acton, in Middlesex. As administrator of the charity of the poor knights of Windsor, he had great difficulty in dealing with the many and conflicting appeals of decayed royalists.
In January 1662, upon the occasion of a great alarm caused by the prevalence of midsummer weather in midwinter, Ryves preached before the House of Commons at St. Margaret's, on Joshua vii. 12, showing how the neglect of exacting justice on offenders (by which he insinuated such of the old king's murderers as were yet reprieved and in the Tower) was a main cause of God's punishing a land' (Evelyn, Diary, 15 Jan.; cf. Pepys, i. 313). Being non-resident at Acton, he put in a drunken curate, whom he directed to persecute Richard Baxter. Baxter was drawing crowded audiences to his sermons in defiance of the conventicle act, by an unpopular application of which, in 1668, he was at length convicted and confined for six months. Baxter rightly attributed his mishap to the absentee rector, who had grown hard and sour; even Sir Matthew Hale had no good word for him. Ryves died at Windsor on 13 July 1677, and was buried in the south aisle of St. George's Chapel, where he is commemorated by a long mural inscription in Latin. By his wife, Kate, daughter of Sir Richard Waldram, knt., of Charley, Leicestershire, he had several children. A son married Judith Tyler in 1668, and his son Bruno entered Merchant Taylors' School in 1709; a kinsman, Jerome Ryves (d. 1705), was installed dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, in March 1699.
Besides three separate sermons, Ryves was the author of 'Mercurius Rusticus; or the Countries Complaint of the Barbarous Outrages committed by the Sectaries of this late flourishing Kingdom.' Nineteen numbers (in opposition to which George Wither started a parliamentary 'Mercurius Rusticus') appeared from August 1642, and the whole were republished, 1646, 1647, and 1685, with a finely engraved frontispiece, in compartments. The assaults upon Sir John Lucas's house, Wardour Castle, and other mansions are narrated, while a second part commences to deal with the violation of the cathedrals. From the fact of its being frequently bound up with 'Mercurius Rusticus,' with the common title of 'Angliae Ruina,' the 'Querela Cantabrigiensis ' of John Barwick [q. v.] has been erroneously attributed to Ryves (Wood, Athenae, iii. 1111). Ryves assisted Walton in the business of the London tithes, and contributed to his polyglot bible (Todd, Memoirs of Walton, i. 4, 306). A number of his letters are among the Ashmole MSS. in the Bodleian Library (see Bloxam, Magd. Coll. Reg. ii. 58). Both Ryves's Christian name and surname were variously spelt by his contemporaries, Brune, Bruen, Brian, Bruno, and Reeves, Rives, Ryve, Reeve, and Ryves.
An engraved portrait of the dean, from an original miniature in oil, was published in 1810; a second was engraved by Earlom (Evans, Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 302).
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714; Wood's Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 1110; Bloxam's Magdalen Coll. Registers, ii. 51-8; Hutchins's Dorset, i. 228 and iv. 96 (pedigree); Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Anglicanae; Newcourt's Repertorium, 1708, i. 423; Lysons's Environs of London, ii. 12; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 12; Lloyd's Memoirs, pp. 5, 6; Grey's Examples of Neal's Puritans, iii. App. p. 13; Baxter's Addit. Notes on Sir M. Hale, 1682, p. 25; Baxter et l'Angleterre religieuse de son temps, 1840, p. 249; Pote's Windsor, p. 365; Fox-Bourne's Hist. of Newspapers, i. 13; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661-2, passim; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn); Brit. Mus. Cat.]