After leaving St. Paul's School he matriculated on 20 July 1654 as a commoner at Wadham College, Oxford, whence he graduated BA on 6 February 1657 (NS).

In a lengthy preface the reader is informed that the Paraphrase was written while Woodford "had the convenience of a private and most delightful retirement" in the company of Mrs. Mary Beale and her husband.

The volume, which is dedicated to Archbishop Sancroft, has prefatory verses by Sir Nicholas Stuart and Thomas Flatman, besides an ode by W. Croune, D.D.

[1] Woodford's miscellaneous poems include two odes to Izaak Walton and verses in commendation of Denham's New Version of the Psalms of David.

A manuscript Ode to the Memory of John, Lord Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is among the Rawlinson collections in the Bodleian, to which library Woodford in March 1657 presented a map of Rome.