The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Pring, His Honour the Hon. Ratcliffe
Pring, His Honour the Hon. Ratcliffe, second son of Thomas E. Pring, solicitor, of Crediton, Devon, was born there on Oct. 17th, 1825, educated at Shrewsbury School, and entered at the Inner Temple in Nov. 1845, being called to the Bar in June 1849. He emigrated to Sydney in 1853, and practised with much success until 1857, when he was appointed Crown Prosecutor at Brisbane, in Queensland, where he was made Q.C. In 1860 he was elected to the first Legislative Assembly of Queensland for the district of East Downs, and served under Mr. (now Sir) R. G. W. Herbert as Attorney-General in the first Ministry formed under responsible government from Dec. 1859 to August 1865. In the second Herbert Ministry he filled the same office from July to August 1866. He was also Attorney-General in the Mackenzie Ministry from August 1867 to Nov. 1868; in the Lilley Government from Nov. 1869 to May 1870; and in the first McIlwraith Administration from May 1879 to June 1880, when he accepted a puisne judgeship of the Supreme Court of Queensland. Mr. Justice Pring died on March 22nd, 1885. In 1863 he was offered the position of first Chief Justice of Queensland, over the head of the late Judge Lutwyche, but declined the post, and Sir James Cockle was appointed.