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Samuel Ward (1572–1643) was an English academic and a master at theUniversity of Cambridge. He served as one of the delegates from theChurch of England to theSynod of Dort.
He was born atBishop Middleham, County Durham. He was a scholar ofChrist's College, Cambridge, where in 1592 he was admitted B.A. In 1595 he was elected to a fellowship atEmmanuel, and in the following year proceeded M.A. In 1599 he was chosen a Fellow of the newSidney Sussex College.[1]
William Perkins entrusted to him for publication his treatise,Problema de Romanae Fidei ementito Catholicismo; Ward published it with a preface addressed toJames I, to whom he was shortly afterwards appointed chaplain. Ward was one of the scholars involved with the translation and preparation of theKing James Bible. He served in the "Second Cambridge Company" charged with translating theApocrypha. During this time he made the acquaintance ofJames Ussher, whom he assisted in patristic researches.
In 1610, Sidney elected him to the mastership of the college and he was created D.D., having been admitted B.D. in 1603. He was now recognised as a moderate withCalvinist views, strongly attached to the Church of England;Thomas Fuller, who was his pupil at Sidney Sussex College, found him consistent. In 1615 Ward was made prebendary ofWells Cathedral, and alsoarchdeacon of Taunton. On 21 February 1618 he was appointed prebendary of York, and in the following year was one of the English delegates to thesynod of Dort. Letters addressed to him there from Thomas Wallis,Gerard Herbert,Joseph Hall, andArthur Lake survive.Simon Episcopius found him the most learned member of the synod.
In 1623 he was appointedLady Margaret's Professor of Divinity in the university. He was one of the licensors ofGeorge Carleton's book againstRichard Montagu's 'Appeale'; it was later suppressed byWilliam Laud; and he appears to have himself taken part in the attack on Montagu, whose chaplain he had at one time been. He concurred in the censure of a sermon preached at Great St. Mary's by one Adams in 1627, advocating the practice of confession (Canterburies Doom, pp. 159–92); and whenIsaac Dorislaus was appointed lecturer on history at Cambridge, he welcomed him. He appears also to have written in reply to the anti-Calvinistic treatiseGod's Love to Mankind byHenry Mason andSamuel Hoard. His college chapel remained unconsecrated.
When theFirst English Civil War broke out his sense of duty, as involved in his sworn allegiance to the crown, would not allow him to take theSolemn League and Covenant, and in consequence he became obnoxious to the presbyterian majority. In 1643, along with many others, he was imprisoned inSt. John's College until, his health giving way, he was permitted to retire inSidney Sussex College, his own college. He was attended during his last days bySeth Ward. On 30 August 1643, while attending the chapel service, he was seized with illness, an attack which terminated fatally on the 7th of the following September. His obsequies were formally celebrated on 30 November, when a funeral oration was pronounced in Great St. Mary's by Henry Molle, the public orator, and a sermon preached by Ward's friend and admirer,Ralph Brownrig. He was interred in the college chapel.
Other pupils wereEdward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester andRichard Holdsworth, and he supported bothAbraham Wheelocke andSimon Birkbeck. Other friends includedJohn Williams,John Davenant,Thomas James, andSir Simonds D'Ewes.
In 2015, Professor Jeffrey Alan Miller ofMontclair State University announced the discovery of an early draft manuscript of a portion of theKing James Bible, specifically 1 Esdras and Wisdom 3–4, among Ward's papers in the archives ofSidney Sussex College, Cambridge.[2] Written in Ward's own handwriting and dating from 1604 to 1608, the manuscript shows Ward crafting portions of theApocrypha, with translation notes in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The manuscript sheds light on the translation process used for the King James Bible, notably that many portions were at least initially translated independently and not collaboratively as was originally thought.[3]
Prior to Miller, the existence of Ward's draft of 1 Esdras had been previously noted in the early nineteenth century by the librarian and scholarHenry Todd (priest), in his biography ofBrian Walton (bishop). Todd writes, in the course of his survey of British Biblical scholarship in the period before Walton: "DrSamuel Ward, the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, was the constant correspondent of Archbishop Usher upon subjects of biblical and oriental criticism. Among his curious Adversaria in the library of Sidney College, of which he was Master, there remain the proof of his attention in translating the first book of Esdras, which probably was the sole part of the Apocrypha assigned to him; and a collation of ancient Versions upon the beginning of Genesis."[4] Todd, however, never specified the exact notebook in question that contained Ward's draft of 1 Esdras. He also overlooked the existence in the same notebook of the draft of Wisdom 3–4.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: "Ward, Samuel (d.1643)".Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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| Preceded by | Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 1610–1643 | Succeeded by |
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