This was a man of mark,--”a vast scholar.”  He was a native of Bishop’s Middleham, in 
the county of Durham.  His father was a gentleman of “more ancientry than estate.”  
He studied at Cambridge, where he was at first a student of Christ’s College, then 
a Fellow of Emanuel, and afterwards Master of Sidney Sussex College.  He entered 
upon this latter office in 1609, and occupied it with great usefulness and honor 
till his death, thirty-four years after.  His college flourished greatly under his 
administration.  Four new fellowships were founded, all the scholarships augmented, 
and a chapel and new range of buildings erected, all in his time.  He was distinguished 
for the gravity of his deportment, and for the integrity with which he discharged the 
duties of his Mastership.

     Being appointed chaplain to the royal favorite, Bishop Montague, he was by 
that prelate made Archdeacon of Taunton in 1615, and also Prebendary of Wells.  
The King next year presented him to the rectory of Much-Munden in Hertforshire; and also 
appointed him one of his chaplains.  In 1617, the excellent Dr. Toby Mathew, archbishop 
of York, made him Prebendary of Ampleford in the cathedral church of York; and this stall 
Dr. Ward retained as long as he lived.

    King James sent him, in 1618, to the Synod of Dort, in Holland, together with 
Bishops Carleton, Davenant, and Hall; as the four divines most able and meet to represent 
the Church of England, at that famous Council.  After a while Dr. Goad, a powerful divine 
and chaplain to Dr. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent in the place of Dr. Hall, 
recalled at his own request, on account of sickness.  The English delegates were treated 
with the highest consideration; and having exerted a very happy influence in the Synod, 
returned with great honor to their own country, after six or eight months’ absence.  
The sittings of the Synod began November 3d, 1618, and ended April 29th of the next 
year.  During all this time, the States General of Holland allowed the British 
envoys ten pounds sterling each day; and at their departure, gave them two hundred pounds 
to bear their expenses; and also to each of them a splendid gold medal, representing the 
Synod in session.

     At this celebrated ecclesiastical council, Walter Balcanqual, B.D., Fellow 
of Pembroke Hall, and afterwards Master of the Savoy, by order of King James, represented 
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.  There were also, besides the members from the 
Dutch provinces, delegates present from Hesse, the Palatinate, Bremen, and 
Switzerland, all of whose churches practised the Presbyterial form of discipline 
and government.  The Church of England, through its “supreme head,” acknowledged 
and communed with all these as true churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, --sitting and 
acting with them, by its delegated theologians, in a solemn ecclesiastical assembly.  
Surely the spirit of the Anglican Church in those days was widely different from what 
is manifested now.

     The object of the Synod, which convened by order of their High Mightinesses, the 
Lords States General, was to settle the doctrinal disputes which ten convulsed the 
established Church of the Netherlands.  For some ten years the dispute had been very 
sharp between Calvinists, who adhered to the old national faith, and the followers of 
Arminius, who innovated upon the old order of things.  The points in dispute related to 
divine predestination, the nature and extent of the atonement, the corruption of man, 
his conversion to God, and the perseverance of saints.  These five points are explained 
in some sixty “canons,” which were “confirmed by the unanimous consent of all and each 
of the members of the whole Synod.”  The Dordrechtan Canons are, perhaps, the most 
careful and exact statement of the Calvinist belief, in scientific form, that 
has ever been drawn up.  It is wisely framed, so that all the usual objections to 
these doctrines are forestalled and excluded in the very form of their statement.  
Although the decrees of Dordrecht had not the desired effect of quelling the errors of 
Arminianism, they are worthy of all it cost to procure them.  At the time of their 
adoption, King James was very hostile to the Arminians.  He soon, however, became more 
lenient toward them, when convinced by Bishop Laud, that the laxity and pliancy of 
Arminianism made it far more supple and convenient for the purposes of  “kingcraft” 
and civil despotism, than the stiff and unyielding temper of Calvinism, whose first 
principle is obedience to God rather than to man.  The court favor took such a turn, 
that it was not many years till, in answer to a question as to what the Arminians 
held, it was wittily said, that they held almost all the best bishoprics and 
deaneries in England.

     Before going home to England, the British delegates made a tour through the 
provinces of Holland, and were received with great respect in most of the principal 
cities.  On his return, Dr. Ward resumed his duties as head of Sidney College.  In 
1621, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University.  In the same year, he was made the 
Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity, which office he sustained with great celebrity 
for more than twenty years.  The English Bible, which he actively assisted in 
translating, was formally published in 1611.  Some errors of the press having crept 
into the first edition, and others into later reprints, King Charles the First, in 
1638, had another edition printed at Cambridge, which was revised by Dr. Ward and Mr. 
Bois, two of the original Translators who still survived, assisted by Dr. 
Thomas Goad, Mr. Mede, and other learned men.  

      When the Assembly of Divines was convened at Westminster, 1643, Dr. Ward was 
summoned as a member, but never attended.  In doctrine, he was a thorough Puritan; but 
in politics, a staunch royalist.  In the sad and distracted times of the civil wars, as 
Thomas Fuller, his affectionate pupil, says, “he turned as a rock riseth with the tide. 
--In a word, he was accounted a Puritan before these times, and popish in these times; 
and yet, being always the same, was a true Protestant at all times.”  When 
hostilities broke out, he joined the other heads of Colleges at Cambridge, in sending 
their college-plate to aid the tyrannical Charles Stuart, whose character, partially 
redeemed by some private virtues, has been so admirably exposed by Macaulay.  
“Faithlessness,” says that philosophic historian, “was the chief cause of his disasters, 
and is the chief stain on his memory.  He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable 
propensity to dark and crooked ways.  It may seem strange that his conscience, which, 
on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached 
him with this great vice.  But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not 
only from constitution and from habit, but also on principle.”   This historical 
judgment may seem severe; but its truth is maintained by other competent critics.  
James Stuart was undoubtedly one of the worse sort of monarchs; but of him Coleridge 
frankly says, --”James I., in my honest judgment, was an angel, compared with his 
sons and grandsons.”

     Dr. Ward, no doubt, like many other good men who disliked the King’s proceedings, 
was compelled, by his conscientious belief in the long established doctrine 
of the “divine right of kings,” to uphold his sovereign.  In consequence of his 
sending the college-plate to be coined for the King’s use, the parliamentary 
authorities deprived Dr. Ward of his professorship and mastership, and 
confiscated his goods.  He was also, in 1642, with three other heads of colleges 
involved in the same transaction, imprisoned in St. John’s College for a short 
time.  During his confinement, he contracted a disorder that proved fatal in six 
weeks after his liberation, which was granted on account of his sickness.  He died, in 
great want, at an advanced age, in 1643, and was the first person buried in Sidney Sussex 
Chapel.  A beautiful character is drawn in some Latin verses addressed to him by 
Dr. Thomas Goad, the close of which is thus given in English by Fuller; - 

          “None thy quick sight, grave judgment, can beguile,
           So skilled in tongues, so sinewy in style;
           Add to all these that peaceful soul of thine,
           Meek, modest, which all brawlings doth decline.”

     Dr. Ward maintained much correspondence with learned men.  His correspondence 
with Archbishop Ushur reveals traits of diversified learning, especially in biblical 
and oriental criticism. *  In his letters to the elder Vossius he adimadverts upon 
that distinguished author’s History of Pelgianism.  His character cannot be better 
described than in the following beautiful passage from Dr. Fuller’s History of 
the University of Cambridge.  “He was a  Moses, not only for slowness of speech, 
but otherwise meekness of nature.  Indeed, when, in my private thoughts, I have 
beheld him and Dr. Collins, ** (disputable whether more different, or more 
eminent in their endowments,) I could not but remember the running of Peter and 
John to the place where Christ was buried.  In which race, John came first, as youngest 
and swiftest; but Peter first entered the grave.  Dr. Collins had much the speed of 
him in quickness of parts; but let me say, (nor doth the relation of pupil misguide me,) 
the other pierced the deeper into underground and profound points in divinity.  Now as 
high winds bring some men the sooner into sleep, so, I conceive, the storms and tempests 
of these distracted times invited this good old man the sooner to his long rest, where 
we leave him, and quietly draw the curtains about him.”

* Dr. Usher, in one of these letters, corrects a misprint in the Translator’s Preface, 
where the name Efnard should be Eynard, or Eginhardus.

** Samuel Collins, Provost of King’s College, and for forty years Regius Professor.  “As 
Caligula is said to have sent his soldiers vainly to fight against the tide, with 
the same success have any encountered the torrent of his Latin in disputation.”