WARD, John II

Ward’s origins are obscure, but his family had probably resided in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for at least one generation. Agnes and Ellen Ward, remembered in the will of Roger Thornton† in 1429, may have been our MP’s sister and mother. Reg. Langley, iii (Surtees Soc. clxix), 835. He himself first appears in the records in the spring of 1446 when he was among those who lost a cargo of wool (in his case one-and-a-quarter sacks) when a local ship, the Peter, foundered in storms. R. Welford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead, i. 322-3; E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 27. By then he must already have been established among Newcastle’s mercantile elite for he was elected as sheriff in the following September before being elected as mayor twice in near succession. Significantly, on 30 Sept. 1450, the day after his second election to the mayoralty, he headed the list of attestors witnessing his own election to Parliament in company with Richard Weltden*. C219/16/1.

On the following 20 Nov., two weeks after the beginning of Parliament, Ward was one of several leading Newcastle men who appeared in the Exchequer to seek relief for customs paid on wool exports lost at sea. Later, on 30 Apr. 1451, six days before the final session convened at Westminster, he and Weltden were among those commissioned to arrest two local shipmen and bring them before the King’s council. While Weltden was apparently at sea for a month apprehending the men (for which he received a reward of 40 marks at the Exchequer), it is unclear whether Ward took an equally active role in executing the commission. Welford, i. 322-3; CPR, 1446-52, p. 445; E403/785, m. 8.

Little evidence survives of the last ten years of Ward’s career. He almost certainly served as one of the aldermen of Newcastle, but given the lack of local records this is impossible to verify. It was probably as such, however, that he was named on two commissions of arrest in the town in August 1454. He continued to be active in trade, and in May 1457 he exported a variety of commodities including woollen cloth, felt hats, barley and honey. Newcastle-upon-Tyne Customs Accts. 1454-1500 (Surtees Soc. ccii), 37. His landholdings in Newcastle are undocumented, but in July 1460 the mayor and commonalty conveyed a piece of waste ground just outside the town and part of the ditch running around its walls to him for the purpose of constructing a water-mill and dam. Welford, i. 342.

There are contradictory indications of Ward’s wealth. To the subsidy of 1451 he was assessed on an annual income of only 26s. 8d, among the lowest recorded for the town’s ruling elite. E179/158/54. Yet the will he made on 24 June 1461 gives a very different picture of his resources. Although the original is now lost, he apparently made provision for his soul by the establishment of an almshouse for 12 poor men and 12 poor women, and instructed his feoffees and executors to pay as much as eight marks annually for a priest to sing for the souls of him and his widow, Margaret, at the altar of St. Loy in All Saints’ church. His feoffees included his fellow merchants, John Penrith* and John Richardson*, while his executors included John Easington†. Brand, i. 366, 640-3; Welford, i. 344; E. Mackenzie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 154-6. There is no evidence that he had any children who survived to adulthood.