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Robert Ward or from 1828 Robert Plumer Ward (19 March 1765 – 13 August 1846),〔(【引用サイトリンク】 House of Commons constituencies beginning with "C" (part 5) )〕 was an English barrister, politician, and novelist. George Canning said that his law books were as pleasant as novels, and his novels as dull as law books. ==Life== He was born in Mount Street, Mayfair, London, on 19 March 1765, the son of John Ward by his wife Rebecca Raphael. His father was a merchant in Gibraltar, also for many years was chief clerk to the civil department of the ordnance in the garrison there. Robert Ward was educated first at Robert Macfarlane's private school at Walthamstow, and then at Westminster School. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 12 February 1783. In 1785 he became a student of the Inner Temple.〔 Ward then passed some years abroad, and travelled in France during the early part of the revolutionary period. He was called to the bar on 17 June 1790, and soon after went the western circuit.〔 In London in 1794, a chance conversation in Bell Yard near Fleet Street put him in possession of information about subversion, and Ward took it to Richard Ford who was a police magistrate. Ford took Ward directly to William Pitt the Prime Minister, and the law officers Archibald Macdonald and John Scott. This fortuitous discovery gave Ward his political and legal contacts.〔Edmund Phipps, ''Memoirs of the Political and Literary Life of Robert Plumer Ward'' vol. 1 (1850), pp. 12–15 and note; (archive.org ).〕 Ward now switched from the western to the northern circuit, to take advantage of his new connections. He had also a small common-law practice in London and before the privy council. He wrote another legal work to order, for the government. A reward in the shape of a judgeship in Nova Scotia was offered Ward; then in June 1802 he received from Pitt an offer of a safe seat in the House of Commons. Ward was Member of Parliament (MP) for Cockermouth from 1802 to 1806,〔 after Pitt had recommended him to Lord Lowther for the seat. He was returned on 8 July 1802, but did not speak in the house till 13 December, when, somewhat to the annoyance of his friends, he supported Henry Addington.〔 Pitt returned to power in summer 1804. Lord Mulgrave succeeded Lord Harrowby at the Foreign Office at the beginning of 1805, and gave Ward (a family connection through their wives) the post of under-secretary, Ward resigning a sinecure post he held as Welsh judge. Charles James Fox took over from Mulgrave in 1806, and Ward lost the post, taken up by George Hammond.〔Robert Beatson, ''A Political Index to the Histories of Great Britain & Ireland'' vol. 1 (1806), p. 409; (Google Books ).〕 On the formation of the Duke of Portland's ministry of 1807, with the appointment of Mulgrave as First Lord of the Admiralty, Ward was given a seat on the Admiralty board.〔 Ward was MP for Haslemere from 1807 to 1823.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 House of Commons constituencies beginning with "H" (part 2) )〕 Turning down an offer of a Treasury lordship, Ward remained at the Admiralty till June 1811, when he was appointed Clerk of the Ordnance. He served in this office under Mulgrave, who was head of the department, till 1823. He made a lengthy report on the state of the ordnance department in Ireland, which was published on 9 November 1816. The following year he made a survey of the eastern and southern coast of England for the same purpose, and in 1819 for the north of England. Retiring from the Commons after the session of 1823, he was appointed auditor of the Civil List.〔 Ward owned Hyde House near Hyde Heath in Buckinghamshire, in the early 19th century. In 1811, Ward anticipated the dismissal of the government in the wake of the passing of the Regency Act, and looked forward to "...being at Hyde House in a fortnight. My garden, farm, plantations and library are the prevailing ideas, and every purchase I have lately made, whether books or pruning-knives are all with a view to my long wished retreat." Ward retired to Hyde House in 1823 to write his novel ''Trentaine, or The Man of Refinement''. Ward took up residence at Gilston, Hertfordshire;〔 in 1832 he was appointed High Sheriff. His office as auditor of the Civil List was incorporated into the treasury in January 1831, and he spent time abroad. Early in 1846 he moved with his wife to the official residence of her father, Sir George Anson, the governor of Chelsea Hospital, and there he died on 13 August the same year. There is a portrait of Ward by Henry Perronet Briggs, an engraving of which by Charles Turner is prefixed to his ''Memoirs''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Plumer Ward」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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