Herbert Edward Ryle - Career

Career

Ryle was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in April 1881, and began a career of twenty years as a teacher. He was ordained deacon in 1882 and priest in 1883. On 15 August 1883 he married Nea Hewish Adams. They had three sons, the eldest of whom died at birth. The youngest, aged only eight, died in 1897.

From September to March 1888 Ryle was Principal of St David's College, Lampeter, 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). After his election as President of Queens' College, Cambridge in 1896 Ryle found little time for writing. He was, however, responsible for the edition of Genesis in the Cambridge Bible (1914), when he was Dean of Westminster.

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

In December 1900 Ryle was appointed Bishop of Exeter, being consecrated at Westminster Abbey in January 1901. He became Bishop of Winchester in the spring of 1903. 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.