Robert Plumer Ward

Robert Ward or from 1828 Robert Plumer Ward (19 March 1765 – 13 August 1846), was an English barrister, politician, and novelist. George Canning said that his law books were as pleasant as novels, and his novels as dull as law books.

He was born in Mount Street, Mayfair, London, on 19 March 1765, the son of John Ward by his wife Rebecca Raphael. His father was a merchant in Gibraltar, also for many years was chief clerk to the civil department of the ordnance in the garrison there. Robert Ward was educated first at Robert Macfarlane's private school at Walthamstow, and then at Westminster School. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 12 February 1783. In 1785 he became a student of the Inner Temple.

Ward then passed some years abroad, and travelled in France during the early part of the revolutionary period. He was called to the bar on 17 June 1790, and soon after went the western circuit. In London in 1794, a chance conversation in Bell Yard near Fleet Street put him in possession of information about subversion, and Ward took it to Richard Ford who was a police magistrate. Ford took Ward directly to William Pitt the Prime Minister, and the law officers Archibald Macdonald and John Scott. This fortuitous discovery gave Ward his political and legal contacts.

Ward now switched from the western to the northern circuit, to take advantage of his new connections. He had also a small common-law practice in London and before the privy council. He wrote another legal work to order, for the government. A reward in the shape of a judgeship in Nova Scotia was offered Ward; then in June 1802 he received from Pitt an offer of a safe seat in the House of Commons. Ward was Member of Parliament (MP) for Cockermouth from 1802 to 1806, after Pitt had recommended him to Lord Lowther for the seat. He was returned on 8 July 1802, but did not speak in the house till 13 December, when, somewhat to the annoyance of his friends, he supported Henry Addington.

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