Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/318

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Ward
312
Ward

four days later. In July of that year he acted as one of the counsel for Dr. Elliot, Captain Vaughan, and Mr. Mould, who were impeached by the commons for circulating King James's declaration (Luttrell). He was appointed attorney-general on 30 March 1693, and was knighted at Kensington on 30 Oct. He was sworn serjeant-at-law on 3 June, and on 8 June 1695 was named lord chief baron of the exchequer. In the following March he was one of the judges who tried Robert Charnock [q. v.] and his associates for treason. He was one of those judges who in January 1700 declined to give an opinion in ‘the bankers' case upon the writ of error’ (Luttrell). In May of the same year he acted as one of the commissioners of the great seal.

The most important case over which Ward presided was the trial of Captain William Kidd [q. v.] and his associates for piracy and murder in May 1701 (State Trials, xiv. 143, 180). He died at his house in Essex Street, Strand, on 14 July 1714. He was buried at Stoke Doyle, Northamptonshire, where he had purchased the lordship of the manor in 1694. He left a sum of money in charity to the parish. Evelyn mentions him as one of the subscribers to Greenwich Hospital in 1696. A portrait was engraved by R. White in 1702 from a painting by Kneller.

Ward married, on 30 March 1676, Elizabeth, third daughter of Thomas Papillon, afterwards sheriff of London. They had ten surviving children. Two of the sons were eminent lawyers. The eldest, Edward, rebuilt Stoke Doyle church and erected in it a handsome monument to his father. Jane, the eldest daughter, married Thomas Hunt of Boreatton, in the parish of Baschurch, Shropshire, and was ancestress of the Ward-Hunt family.

[Inscription on monument at Stoke Doyle, per the Rev. G. M. Edmonds; Admission-book of the Inner Temple; Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple, privately printed, 1883; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, passim; State Trials, x. 319–71, 1338–1418, xii. 1291–8, 1378, xiii. 451, xiv. 123, 234; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1689–90, pp. 59, 65; Bridges's Hist. of Northamptonshire (Whalley), ii. 377–8; Le Neve's Knights, p. 445; Noble's Contin. of Granger's Biogr. Hist. ii. 181; Foss's Judges of England; Memoirs of T. L. Papillon, ed. A. F. Papillon, 1887, pp. 46, 241–5, 247–9, 390.]

G. Le G. N.

WARD, EDWARD (1667–1731), humourist, of ‘low extraction’ and with little education, was born in Oxfordshire in 1667 (Ward, Miscellanies, vol. v. pref.). He tells as that his father and ancestors lived in prosperity in Leicestershire (Nuptial Dialogues, 1710, dedication). In early life he visited the West Indies, and afterwards he began business as a publican in Moorfields. By 1699 he had moved to Fulwood's Rents, where he kept a punch-shop and tavern (probably the King's Head), next door to Gray's Inn, until his death. Giles Jacob (Poetical Register, 1723) says: ‘Of late years he has kept a public-house in the city (but in a genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor, has afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment; especially the high-church party.’ In a book called ‘Apollo's Maggot in his Cups,’ Ward professed great indignation at this account, and said that his house was not in the city, but in Moorfields. Oldys says that Ward lived for a time in Gray's Inn, then in Clerkenwell and Moorfields successively, and finally in Fulwood's Rents, where he would entertain any company who invited him with stories and adventures of the poets and authors he had known.

In consequence of his attacks on the government in his ‘Hudibras Redivivus,’ 1705, he was indicted; and, on pleading guilty, he was ordered to stand twice in the pillory, at the Royal Exchange and Charing Cross, to pay a fine of forty marks, and to find security for good behaviour (Luttrell, Brief Relation of State Affairs, vi. 36, 57, 107; Gent. Mag. October 1857). When pilloried he received rough usage from the mob; ‘as thick as eggs at Ward in pillory,’ says Pope (Dunciad, iii. 34). Elsewhere Pope writes that Ward's vile rhymes were exported to the colonies, to be changed for bad tobacco (ib. i. 234).

Ward died at Fulwood's Rents on 20 June 1731, and was buried on the 27th in St. Pancras churchyard (Gent. Mag. 1731, p. 266; Lysons, Environs of London, iii. 371). His wife and daughter are mentioned in a poetical will made in 1725, and printed in ‘Applebee's Weekly Journal’ for 28 Sept. 1731. A man of considerable natural parts and with a gift of humour, ‘Ned Ward,’ as he is frequently called, imitated Butler's ‘Hudibras’ both in his style and in his attacks on the whigs and low-church party. Though vulgar and often grossly coarse, his writings throw considerable light on the social life of the time of Queen Anne, and especially on the habits of various classes in London; but much allowance has to be made for exaggeration (Gent. Mag. October 1857, ‘London in 1699: Scenes from Ned Ward’).

Ward is twice referred to in the ‘Art of Sinking in Poetry’ (Pope, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, x. 362, 390). Noble (Continuation of Granger, ii. 262) mentions four