Nathaniel Ward (1578 – October 1652) was a

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

clergyman and pamphleteer in England and

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

Biography

A son of John Ward, a noted Puritan minister, he was born in Haverhill, Suffolk, England. He studied law and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge University in 1603. He practised as a

barrister A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdiction (area), jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include arguing cases in courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, jurisprud ...

and travelled in continental Europe. In

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

he met a German Protestant reformer, David Pareus, who persuaded him to enter the ministry. In 1618 he was a chaplain to a company of English merchants at Elbing, in Poland. He returned to England and in 1628 he was appointed rector of Stondon Massey in Essex. He was soon recognised as one of the foremost

ministers in Essex, and so in 1631 was reprimanded by the Bishop of London, William Laud. Although he escaped excommunication, in 1633 he was dismissed for his Puritan beliefs. (Ward's two brothers also suffered for their non-conformity.) In 1634 Ward emigrated to

and became a minister in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

for two years. He then resigned because of ill-health. While still living in Ipswich, he wrote for the colony of Massachusetts '' The Body of Liberties'', legal code, which was adopted by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Company in December 1641. This was the first

code of law A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the co ...

s established in

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

. ''The Body of Liberties'' defined liberty in terms that were advanced in their day, establishing a code of fundamental principles based on

Common Law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

, ''

Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardin ...

'', and the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

. However, Ward believed in

theocracy Theocracy is a form of autocracy or oligarchy in which one or more deity, deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries, with executive and legislative power, who manage the government's ...

rather than democracy. One of his epigrams was:

The upper world shall Rule, While Stars will run their race: The nether world obey, While People keep their place.

Ward thought that justice and the law were essential to the liberty of the individual. Some have said that ''The Body of Liberties'' began the American tradition of liberty, leading eventually to the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...

.Winthrop Society
/ref> In 1645 Ward began his second book, ''The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America''. This was published in England in January, 1646–1647, before Ward's return there, under the pseudonym of Theodore de la Guard. Three other editions, with important additions and changes, soon followed. The ''Simple Cobbler'' is a small book, which "in spite of its bitterness, and its lack of toleration" is "full of quaint originality, grim humor and power", according to the anthology ''Colonial Prose and Poetry: The Transplanting of Culture 1607–1650'' (1903).Trent, William P. and Wells, Benjamin W., ''Colonial Prose and Poetry: The Transplanting of Culture 1607–1650'', New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1903 edition, pp. 250–251. According to the anthology, the book is "probably the most interesting literary performance" in the first half of the 17th century in the English colonies that later became the United States. The book was later reprinted in 1713 and 1843 in Boston, Massachusetts. He also wrote several religious-political pamphlets. At the end of the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

, Ward returned to England, where he wrote pamphlets, particularly ''Discolliminium'' (1650), critical of the establishment of the

Commonwealth of England The Commonwealth of England was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when Kingdom of England, England and Wales, later along with Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, were governed as a republi ...

. His contribution to the Engagement debate (an oath of loyalty to the new Commonwealth) and his attack on polemic opponents, particularly

John Dury John Dury (1596 in Edinburgh – 1680 in Kassel) was a Scottish Calvinist minister and an intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he move ...

, included attacking the speed with which the oath was to be administered and questioning the government's legitimacy as a just power. Ward became the minister of the church at Shenfield in Essex and died shortly after in Shenfield.

References

External links

* *
''Cambridge History of English and American Literature'' – Emigrant Puritans
*. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Nathaniel 1578 births 1652 deaths 17th-century American writers 17th-century English male writers 17th-century English writers 17th-century English Anglican priests 17th-century New England Puritan ministers Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge American Christian clergy American religious writers English Caroline nonconforming clergy Founders of Hartford, Connecticut Clergy from colonial Massachusetts American pamphleteers American male non-fiction writers People from Haverhill, Suffolk People from Ipswich, Massachusetts People from colonial Massachusetts People from Shenfield