Robert Ware (23 October 1639 – 7 April 1697)[1] was a historian and forger of historical documents, which he applied to Protestant polemics.
[3] On his father's death in 1666, he inherited a large collection of historical manuscripts, which he eventually sold to Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon in 1686.
[4] While the manuscripts were in his possession, he added a large number of fabricated documents to them.
[3] On 24 December 1666, Robert married Elizabeth, the daughter of his cousin Sir Henry Piers, 1st Baronet and Mary Jones.
[3] Ware's invented documents misled historians of the Protestant Reformation for centuries afterwards; Thomas Edward Bridgett finally exposed him in 1890, but it was not until the 20th century that historians could sort out the implications of his findings.