WARD, JOHN (fl. 1642–1643), poet, was a native of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. He was a man of strong puritan feeling, and on the outbreak of the civil war served as a trooper under the Earl of Bedford [see Russell, William, first Duke of Bedford]. On 13 Dec. 1642 he took part, under Sir William Waller [q. v.], in the action in which Lord Grandison was captured in Winchester. Ward celebrated the event in a poem entitled ‘The taking of Winchester by the Parliament's Forces. As also the surrendring up of the Castle. By I. W., an eye-witness’ (London, 1642, 4to), in which he gives a most detailed account of the whole skirmish, and laments over Grandison's subsequent escape from captivity. In the same year Ward also published another longer poem, entitled ‘An Encouragement to Warre, or Bellum Parliamentale; shewing the Unlawfulnesse of the late Bellum Episcopale’ (London, 4to), which bore on the title-page an elaborate engraving representing the prelates being borne away ‘as stuble before the wind.’ The poem consists of a long list of the moral and theological shortcomings of the cavaliers. The poem was reissued in 1643, with a fresh title-page, under the title ‘The Christian's Incouragement earnestly to contend
For Christ, His gospell, and for all
Our Christian liberties in thrall,
Which who refuseth let him bee
For aye accursed.’
To this issue was added ‘The Humble Petition of the Protestant Inhabitants’ of part of Ireland, of which, however, Ward was not the author.
[Ward's Works; Corser's Collectanea (Chetham Soc.), v. 338–42.]
WARD, JOHN (1679?–1758), biographer of the Gresham professors, son of John Ward, a dissenting minister, by his wife, Constancy Rayner, was born in London about 1679. For some years he was a clerk in the navy office, prosecuting his studies in leisure hours with the assistance of John Ker, who kept an academy, first in Highgate and afterwards in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell. He left the navy office in 1710, and opened a school in Tenter Alley, Moorfields, which he kept for many years. In 1712 he became one of the earliest members of a society composed principally of divines and lawyers, who met periodically in order to read discourses upon the civil law or upon the law of nature and nations. On 1 Sept. 1720 he was chosen professor of rhetoric in Gresham College (Ward, Gresham Professors, p. 334).
Ward was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, under the presidency of Sir Isaac Newton, on 30 Nov. 1723. He was often elected a member of the council of that society, and in 1752 he was appointed one of the vice-presidents (Thomson, Hist. of the Royal Society, App. No. 4, p. xxxvi). In August 1733 he made a journey through Holland and Flanders to Paris. He was elected on 5 Feb. 1735–6 a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, of which he became director on 15 Jan. 1746–7. In April 1753 he was appointed vice-president of that society (Gough, Chronological List, p. 6). He had joined another society formed by a number of noblemen and gentlemen for the encouragement of learning. Among the works printed at their expense were John Davis's edition of the ‘Dissertations of Maximus,’ issued under the supervision of Ward, and ‘Ælianus, De Natura Animalium,’ edited by Abraham Gronovius, who gratefully acknowledges the assistance he received from Ward. On 20 May 1751 the university of Edinburgh conferred upon Ward the degree of LL.D. He afterwards became a member of the Gentlemen's Society at Spalding. On the establishment of the British Museum he was elected one of the trustees. He died in his apartments in Gresham College on 17 Oct. 1758, and his remains were interred in the dissenters' burial-ground, Bunhill Fields.
A portrait of him was presented to the British Museum by Thomas Hollis, who had been under his tuition. An anonymous portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
His principal works are:
- ‘De ordine, sive de venusta et eleganti tum vocabulorum, tum membrorum sententiæ collocatione,’ London, 1712, 8vo.
- ‘De Asse et partibus ejus commentarius,’ London, 1719, 8vo (anon.); reprinted in ‘Monumenta vetustatis Kempiana,’ 1720.
- ‘Ad Con. Middletoni de medicorum apud veteres Romanos degentium conditione dissertationem, quæ servilem atque ignobilem eam fuisse contendit, responsio,’ London [February 1726–7], 8vo.
Conyers Middleton [q. v.] published a defence of his dissertation in 1727, and to this Ward replied in
- ‘Dissertationis … de medicorum Romæ degentium conditione ignobili et servili defensio examinata,’ London, 1728, 8vo.
- ‘The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, to which is prefixed the Life of the Founder, Sir Thomas Gresham,’ London, 1740, fol. There is in the British Museum an interleaved copy of this valuable biographical work, with numerous manuscript additions and corrections by the
