Ward was born at Danby Castle near Guisborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, just south of the River Tees, in 1652,[2] as the son of a farmer and educated as a Presbyterian at Pickering School.
He travelled in France and Italy, and for five or six years held a commission in the papal guard, seeing service against the Ottoman Turks.
His Errata to the Protestant Bible, based on Gregory Martin's work on the same subject, has been frequently republished since its appearance in 1688, once with a preface by Lingard (1810).
Bishop John Milner wrote a pamphlet to defend it from one of the Protestant attacks which its republication early in the nineteenth century provoked.
He left two unpublished manuscripts on the Divine Office now in the British Museum, one on the pope's supremacy in the possession of Mr. Gillow, one of the history of England, and others.