Ramsden came from a family of yeoman clothiers who raised themselves into the ranks of the county gentry by judicious purchases of ex-monastic lands in the upper Calderdale. He acquired a new family seat by the purchase of Byram, four miles north-east of Pontefract, but also retained substantial investments in collieries, forges and fulling-mills.
Ramsden was one of the signatories of the indenture returning Sir Thomas Wentworth* at the Yorkshire election of December 1620, and during the 1628 election, when Sir John Jackson* advised Wentworth that Sir Francis Foljambe* was too obnoxious to Sir John Savile* to secure re-election at Pontefract, Ramsden took his place.
Ramsden remained attached to the Wentworth interest during the 1630s, and was commended for collecting all of the Yorkshire Ship Money quota of £12,000 with which he was charged during his tenure as sheriff. He was re-elected to the Short Parliament, but in July 1640 he presumably offended Wentworth by signing the Yorkshire petition against unruly soldiers, and at the autumn election he was replaced at Pontefract by Wentworth’s cousin, Sir George Wentworth† of Woolley.
Ramsden drafted his will on 3 Sept. 1642, on the eve of the Civil War, settling many of his smaller properties on trustees including Sir William Savile† and Sir Edward Osborne, 1st bt.*, which assets were to be sold after his death to settle his debts. Initially one of those who attempted to preserve Yorkshire’s neutrality, he subsequently joined the royalist cause, serving at Pontefract castle. After the surrender of this garrison, he went to Newark, where he was buried on 27 Mar. 1646. His grandson was created a baronet after the Revolution; but the family did not sit in the Commons again until the reign of George II, when the 3rd baronet represented Appleby in four Parliaments as an independent Whig.