William Ward, 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward (1750-1823)

William Ward was the son of John Ward, 1st Viscount Dudley and Ward, by his second wife, Mary Carver.  John had succeeded to the title of 6th Baron Ward in 1740 and in 1763 was additionally honoured with the title of Viscount Dudley and Ward.   He was connected to the Grey family of Stamford through his mother.  The family owned estates in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, including extensive coal mines, from which much of their wealth flowed.  The family seat was at Himley Hall, Staffordshire, near the town of Dudley.

William was born at Himley Hall and educated at Eton before going to Oriel College, Oxford.  Like his father and half-brother, John, before him, William chose to stand for the House of Commons, and in 1780 was elected as MP for Worcester City.  He held the seat until 1788, when he succeeded his brother John as 3rd Viscount and entered the House of Lords.

In 1780, William married Julia, daughter of Godfrey Bosvile and Diana Wentworth (daughter of Sir William Wentworth who rebuilt Bretton Hall).  They had one son, John William, born in 1781, whose education was somewhat unusual in that a separate household was set up for him in Paddington. A variety of tutors there provided an education which thoroughly grounded him in the classics, but ignored his physical and emotional needs.  John William then studied at Oriel College Oxford and at the University of Edinburgh.  He emerged from this with a great love of literature but with frail health, an indecisive nature and some difficulty in human relationships. He never married.  He sat as an MP from 1802 until 1823 when he succeeded his father as 4th Viscount Dudley and Ward.  He served briefly as Foreign Secretary under Canning (1827-1828) and was made Earl of Dudley.   He had always suffered from a “nervous temperament” (probably depression arising from low self-esteem) but in the 1830s his mental state deteriorated.  In 1832 he was committed to an asylum where he died in 1833.
 
The 3rd Viscount, William, had a reputation as something of an eccentric, though also a man of benevolence and charity.  He was fond of music and one writer describes him in later life as “passing time in the society of those who, like himself, preferred port wine and fiddling to the pursuits either of politics or literature”.  The same source says that his Viscountess “took refuge in later life in cards and strong waters”.  His purchase of much of the library of a Neapolitan nobleman (Francesco Berio, marchese di Salza) shortly before his death seems, then, somewhat unexpected.  It may be that his son, John William, was in fact the prime mover in this transaction.  The latter is said to have considered that “the happiest life would be £1500 a year and the first floor over a bookseller’s shop”.  Moreover, after his death, he was remembered as having purchased an “extensive Venetian library”.  This could well be a slightly faulty recollection of the Berio/Salza transaction, funded by his father but instigated by the son, since at that time John William enjoyed a generous annual allowance from his father but had no capital of his own.