said in his behalf that while in greatest favour with the town he was content to play, in the ‘Rehearsal,’ a soldier bringing in a message. He received the highest terms of any comic actor of the day. His claims to rank as a dramatist, except as regards his pantomimes, are trivial, his work containing next to nothing original.
A portrait of Woodward, by Worlidge, as Brass in the ‘Confederacy;’ a second, by Vandergucht, as Petruchio, engraved by J. R. Smith, and reproduced in the illustrations to Chaloner Smith's ‘Catalogue;’ and a sketch of him as Razor in the ‘Upholsterer,’ by De Wilde after Zoffany, are in the Garrick Club. One, by F. Hayman, as the Fine Gentleman in ‘Lethe,’ was engraved by McArdell; and one by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in what character is not said, engraved by James Watson. A portrait as Petruchio, after Vandergucht, and one as the Fine Gentleman, are among the engraved portraits in the National Art Library. A writer in ‘Notes and Queries’ refers to ‘Illustrations by Woodward of the Seven Ages of Parsons’—‘Curate,’ ‘Priest,’ ‘Pedagogue,’ ‘Vicar,’ ‘Rector,’ ‘Incumbent,’ and ‘Welsh Parson’ (9th ser. ii. 309).
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Hitchcock's Irish Stage; Chetwood's History of the Stage; Biographia Dramatica; Tate Wilkinson's Memoirs and Wandering Patentee; An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, 1785; Manager's Note Book; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe; Davies's Life of Garrick, and Dramatic Miscellanies; Thespian Dictionary; Churchill's Rosciad; Fitzgerald's Life of Garrick; Dibdin's History of the Stage; Boaden's Life of Siddons; O'Keeffe's Recollections; Dibdin's Edinburgh Stage; Georgian Era; Lowe's Bibliography of the Stage; Victor's Works; Victor and Oulton's History of the Stage; Dramatic Censor, 1770.]
WOODWARD, HEZEKIAH or EZEKIAS (1590–1675), nonconformist divine, was possibly the son of Ezekias Woodward of Warwickshire, who matriculated from University College, Oxford, on 25 Oct. 1583. Ezekias the younger, who was of Worcestershire, attended a grammar school in his native county, matriculated from Balliol College, Oxford, on 16 June 1610, and graduated B.A. on 15 Feb. 1612. He gives a pathetic picture of his early years in the preface to ‘Of the Child's Portion’ and the uselessness of his education. This and an impediment in his speech made him despair of finding a career other than ‘to digge or to begge;’ he determined to labour with his own hands, and for that purpose twice went to a ‘strange land.’ From a passage in his dedication of ‘Light to Grammar’ it would appear that he visited the court of the elector palatine at Heidelberg. He returned about 1619 and opened a school at Aldermanbury. His educational methods displayed much originality and insight. With Thomas Herne [q. v.] and Hartlib he endeavoured to introduce into English schools the system of John Amos Comenius, the great Moravian bishop and educationist, viz. the teaching of the mother tongue before Latin, instruction in the facts of nature, and the ‘enfranchising of the understanding by the senses’ in every way. Charles Hoole [q. v.] in his translation (1658) of Comenius's ‘Orbis Pictus’ refers to Woodward as an eminent schoolmaster, and his educational writings are evidently the result of long experience.
Woodward was, according to Wood, ‘always puritanically affected,’ and in 1641 he began to employ himself in controversial writing and preaching on the presbyterian side. He probably preached in St. Mary's, Aldermanbury, of which Edmund Calamy the elder [q. v.] had then the cure. He seems, however, to have been soon drawn into some sympathy with the independents. In 1644 he published ‘Inquiries into the Causes of our Miseries’ anonymously, and without a license. Only two of three completed sections were issued; the second was seized while in the press. Three further sections were designed but were not written. Later in the year the warden of the Stationers' Company complained in the House of Lords ‘of the frequent printing of scandalous books by divers, as Hezekiah Woodward and John Milton.’ Woodward was committed to the custody of the gentleman-usher, and, after submitting to an examination by two judges, was released on giving his bond to appear when summoned. Woodward was a great admirer of John Goodwin [q. v.], and a sympathiser with the ‘Apologetical Narration,’ but quite unable to make up his mind as to the points at issue between presbyterians and independents. He firmly believed in a final agreement: ‘so that I have not understanding enough,’ he confesses, ‘to tell my selfe what way I am, unlesse for both, as they may both lead each to other, and meete in one.’ Later on, according to Wood, ‘when he saw the independents and other factious people to be dominant, he became one of them, and not unknown to Oliver,’ whose chaplain, ‘or at least favourite,’ he became. About 1649 he was presented by Cromwell to the vicarage of Bray, near Maidenhead. Here he remained some years,
