guilty of blasphemy, and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Derby gaol. On 15 Aug. Henry Hunt [q. v.] presented a petition to the House of Commons from two hundred citizens of London, expressing ‘disgust and indignation’ at the sentence, and praying for the release of Ward and Twort. Hunt made a violent attack on the government for prosecuting opinions. Joseph Hume [q. v.] spoke in favour of the petition. The attorney-general opposed. On Hunt's motion the house was counted out while Alexander Perceval [q. v.] was speaking. No mitigation of the sentence was obtained, but the confinement, as Ward describes it, was by no means harsh.
Liberated on 3 Feb. 1834, Ward added Bristol to his missionary resorts, and gathered a congregation there. At the end of 1835 he had a paralytic stroke. In October 1836 he settled in Leeds. He died at 91 Park Lane, Leeds, on 12 March 1837. His disposition was gentle, his demeanour modest, and his moral tone high; he was a suasive speaker, and in conversation, as in his writing, showed considerable graphic power and some humour. His attempts at verse are uncouth, but often effective.
Ward's naked illiteracy will repel readers, yet his vein of mysticism is both quaint and curious. He is one of the very few Irish mystics. In addition to the writings of Joanna Southcott and her school, he knew something of George Fox (1624–1691) [q. v.] and Lodowicke Muggleton [q. v.], but most of his ideas are the result of his own ruminations on the Bible. Not only does he treat the sacred narrative as sheer allegory throughout, but handling the English Bible as a divine composition, even to the printed forms of its letters, he elaborates a cabala for eliciting hidden meanings. Similar tricks had been played with the Septuagint in early days, but Ward's manipulation of the English version is unique. His theology is a spiritual pantheism, which allows immortality only to the regenerate.
Of Ward's manuscripts a collection, including 366 pieces, was (1881) in the possession of Mr. C. B. Holinsworth of Birmingham. His printed works include over thirty pieces, among which may be named:
- ‘Vision of Judgment,’ 1829, 2 parts, 8vo.
- ‘Living Oracle,’ 1830, 8vo.
- ‘Book of Letters,’ 1831, 8vo.
- ‘Discourses at the Rotunda,’ 1831, 8vo.
- ‘Review of Trial and Sentence,’ 1832, 8vo.
- ‘Creed,’ 1832, 8vo.
- ‘Spiritual Alphabet,’ 1833, 8vo.
- ‘Origin of Evil,’ 1837, 8vo.
- ‘New Light on the Bible,’ 1873, 8vo.
In 1874 a ‘jubilee’ edition of his works was projected by Mr. Holinsworth, with title ‘Writings of Zion Ward, or Shiloh, the Spiritual Man;’ only three parts were published, Birmingham, 1874–5, 8vo; but other tracts have been printed separately, e.g. ‘Good and Evil made One,’ 1877, 8vo.
[Memoir, 1881, by C. B. H[olinsworth], chiefly from Ward's writings, which are full of autobiographical particulars; Hansard, 1832; Carlisle's Isis, 1832; Ward's pamphlets; private information.]
WARD, JOHN (1805–1890), diplomatist, was born on 28 Aug. 1805 at East Cowes, where his father, John Ward, was collector of customs. His mother was a sister of Thomas Arnold [q. v.] of Rugby, with whom, as well as with Whately and other liberal political thinkers, Ward, as a young man, was much associated. In 1831 he jointly edited with his uncle the short-lived weekly journal called ‘The Englishman's Register,’ of which Arnold was the proprietor (cf. Stanley, Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold, 1845, i. 285). He abandoned the profession of the law, for which he had been trained, on his appointment in 1837 to an inspectorship of prisons, and in the following year, after acting for some months as private secretary to the first Earl of Durham [see Lambton, John George], became through his influence secretary to the New Zealand Colonization Company, on whose behalf he published in 1839 a lucid account of the resources of the island. He had for many years previously taken a keen interest in the politics, and more especially in the commercial and industrial progress, of France, Belgium, and Germany, and had published articles on both home and foreign affairs in the ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘British and Foreign’ reviews. Early in 1841 he was appointed British commissioner for the revision of the State tolls. In 1844 he was sent to Berlin as British commissioner for the settlement, through the arbitration of the king of Prussia, of the so-called Portendic claims on France, arising out of a blockade by French ships of part of the African coast. In the summer of 1845 Lord Aberdeen appointed him consul-general at Leipzig, with the further commission to visit periodically those places in Germany where the conferences of the Zollverein should be held. At the close of 1850 Lord Palmerston instructed him to act as secretary of legation at Dresden during the diplomatic conferences held in that capital, where he was a close witness of the notable victory achieved by the policy of Austria, represented by Schwarzenberg. In 1854 he attended the Munich exhibition of arts and
