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Rh of again. Early in the seventeenth century the Ward family was upon the old Dudley stock, which had become rather sterile of moral vitality. Lord Edward, Dud's father, was a very fast character, and nearly ruined his estates by loose living. To recover them for his house, he married his granddaughter and heir, Frances, to Humble Ward, the only son of a rich jeweller to the queen of Charles I. This marriage of title to fortune recovered the sinking estate of the Dudley family. The Christian name of this founder of the house of Ward has a puritanic sound and meaning, which would grace the nomenclature of the Long Parliament; still he adhered to Charles, and became a member of "the mongrel parliament" which that sovereign convoked at Oxford in 1644. Having brought the king timely and liberal supplies, and being the husband of the heiress of Lord Dudley, his impoverished Majesty, having neither silver or gold, paid him in the cheap and easy coinage of a title, as Lord Ward. Whether he really received the name of Humble at the font, or at a later stage of his history when his character was fully developed, perhaps may be considered a matter of honest doubt. For, although he adhered to Charles to the last, and was a member of his Oxford parliament; he still managed to live on intimate terms of good and friendly intercourse with his republican neighbours who knew