The family of De la Varde long flourished in Normandy. The name, according to the Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie, is derived from a term of forest jurisdiction, “marking the space assigned to each guard.” Osmond Lavarde occurs in 1180 in the Exchequer Rolls of the province. The De la Vardes proved their nobility in 1667, and belonged to the “Election de Bernay.” Their coat was Sable, in pale a sword Argent hilted Or; in chief two spur rowels of the same; totally different from the Vairy, Argent and Sable, borne by the English De la Wardes. I am inclined to believe that the two families had no connection with each other, There is, however, a Thurstan Lavard mentioned in the Monasticon Anglicanum, who was a benefactor of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and lived near Cliffe, in Yorkshire. and that the latter, first known as Warda or De Warde, derived their name from Gar or Garde, near Corbeil, Isle de France. Ingelram de Warda is mentioned in Northamptonshire in 1130, and Willielmo de Garda witnesses one of John de Hastings’ deeds in the time of Henry II. In Yorkshire, “the ancient family of the Wards,” according to Thoresby, “appears in possession of Guiseley from the earliest period to which records ascend. The nunnery of Esholt (Essheholt, the Ash wood) was founded in the middle of the 12th century by Simon de Ward, who, while he freely bestowed the fairest and most fruitful portion of his estate on strangers, was content to reserve for himself and his posterity a mansion and domain at Guiseley which no modern landowner, who had been possessed of both would have been content to inhabit for a twelvemonth.” His descendants had, how­ever, other and better possessions; and gave lands to Fountains Abbey at Givendale, Sawley, and Sleford. Sir Simon Ward, who succeeded his father in 1306, was one of the county magnates, and a soldier whose name long remained a household word in Yorkshire. His first campaign was against the Scots in Galloway in 1308: in 13 n he was a supervisor of Array and Leader of the Levies in Yorkshire; and in 1313, after receiving his pardon as an adherent of Thomas of Lancaster, was taken prisoner at the battle of Bannockburn.One of the Scottish lists includes him among the “Barons and Knight Bannerets” there slain. Archbishop Greenfield, of whom he held Guiseley, contributed £20 towards his ransom; and in 1314 he recommenced, as Captain of Berwick-upon-Tweed, his harassing and life-long warfare against the Scots. He was High Sheriff of York in 1316; and when the insurrection was raised by the Earl of Lancaster and his party against the King in 1321, he, being still Sheriff, was appointed sole commissioner to assemble the forces of Yorkshire to resist them.

“But a far greater distinction awaited him, and within three miles of his own house. For the Earl, after setting fire to Burton-upon-Trent, and fleeing from the royal army, having been compelled, by a council of his adherents at Ponte­fract Castle, to march to his castle of Dunstanbrough, in Northumberland, advanced on Tuesday, the 16th March, 1322, to the pass of the river Ure, at Boroughbridge. Here they found the forces of Sir Andrew Harcla and Sir Simon Ward drawn up to oppose their progress, and an obstinate engagement took place in attempting to force the wooden bridge, in which the Earl of Hereford was slain; and on the following day, after an endeavour to pass the ford, the Earl of Lancaster and the greater part of his followers were made prisoners in the town. The parochial chapel, a few hundred paces from the bridge, to which the Earl of Lancaster probably fled, and looking on the Crucifix, said, ‘Good Lord, I rendre myself to thee, and put me ynto thy mercy,’ has lately been ruthlessly swept away; but a cross of the period, no doubt commemorative of the battle, is still to be seen.”—-J. R. Walbran.

Sir Simon attended the great Council at Westminster in 1324; another of the “Magnates” of Winchester of the same date Mr. Walbran states that Simon was a baron by writ in 1326; but it was his namesake, Simon, second Lord de la Ward, who was then summoned to Parliament. There were indubitably not two Simons summoned in that year. (Palgrave’s Parliamentary Writs): and was busied with public affairs to the last day of his life. He died in 1334. “Whether, after having passed through so many perils, he died at last in his bed, has not been ascertained; neither why he had incurred that extreme censure of the Church which required Abbot Coxwold to pass through the awestricken townsmen of Ripon, who had rejoiced in his might, to absolve the senseless corpse whose spirit had passed away to the supreme tribunal of its God. It was a form that was necessary to enable him to have Christian burial: but whether he obtained it in the church of Ripon, or among the nuns at Esholt, is forgotten.”—Ibid. Camden says that his residence was at Grindal, a small village lying between Bridlington and Hunmanby, “of note only for being the seat of Simon Ward, High Sheriff in this county 9 Ed. II.” He had in addition a house at Givendale, where his successors chiefly abode, and a “faire Maner-place of stone”—long since destroyed—remained in Leland’s time. It “stood upon the Eastern bank of the river Ure, about three miles below Ripon, commanding sweet prospects up and down the vale.” Here, knighted in each successive generation, the direct male line continued till 1521. The last heir, Sir Christopher, Master of the Hart-hounds to Richard III., fought at Flodden, and was Standard-bearer to Henry VIII. at Boulogne. He left, according to Thoresby, “one daughter and three granddaughters—namely the daughters of his daughter Anne Nevill—his co-heirs.” He bore Azure a cross patonce Or.

A cadet of this house, Bernard Ward, went to Ireland in 1570, and there founded the family now represented by Lord Bangor. His son Nicholas, born in his adopted country in 1606, was the father of 1. Bernard: 2. Sir Robert, created a baronet by Charles II. for his loyalty during the Civil War, who having survived his only son, died s. p.: 3. Thomas, a Colonel in the King’s army, slain at Worcester; and 4. Arthur, whose line expired in the following generation. Bernard, the first born, was the grandfather of another Bernard, Sheriff of Down in 1690, who fell in a duel with Jocelyn Hamilton, where both adversaries received their death wound. The next in succession, singularly enough, acquired Bangor through a Hamilton heiress, and their son Bernard was created in 1770 Baron Bangor of Castle Ward, co. Down, and Viscount Bangor in 1781.

Contemporary with the Sheriff Simon, and perhaps—though the arms differ— his kinsman, was Robert de la Ward, Steward of the Household to Edward I., who was summoned to Parliament as a Baron in 1299, and served at the siege of Carlaverock in the ensuing year: “Apres ceus deuz revindrent là La Warde e Johans de Gray, Ke de nouvel ont envay Ceus dedenz, ki bien atendent, E ars e arbalestes tendent, E traient de lour espringaut, E bien se tienent paringaut E au getter e au lancier.”

He married Ida or Idonea, daughter of Robert Lord Fitz Walter, by whom he was enfeoffed of the manor of Shopland. “In 1307, they held it jointly of the King in eapite, as of the Honour of Bologne, by the service of one knight’s fee.”—Morant's Essex. Most likely he was himself an Essex man, for his father, John de la Ward, occurs in the Monasticon among the benefactors of Dunmow Priory. In the famous letter addressed by the barons assembled at Lincoln to the Pope, to which his seal is attached, he is styled Dominus de Alba Aula. Idonea Fitz-Warine gave him only a daughter; but by an earlier marriage he had had, besides another daughter, a son named Simon, who was appointed Governor of York, and subsequently Constable of Pontefract. It seems he died s. p., for his heirs were the two half-sisters already named, Joan, wife of Hugh Meinell, and Margaret, married first to Thomas Staple, and secondly to John Chanceus. The male line probably survived in collaterals. Warde of Hinckley in Leicestershire bore Vairy Azure and Ermine, or the baronial coat in other tinctures; and the name, at least, travelled all over England. There was a De la Ward summoned from Buckinghamshire for service against the Scots in 1326; two others, William le Ward of Framlingham, and Roger Ward of Kenton and Soham, attended the array and muster of the Hundred of Loose in Suffolk the same year; while a third, John le Ward, Chief Constable of the county, was the arrayer on that occasion. Walter de la Ward, again of Suffolk, is found in the Hundred Rolls of 1272: and Warde-Hutton still keeps the name. Sir John Warde of Middleton in Yorkshire, who had been pardoned as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, received a summons to attend the great Council held at Westminster in 1324.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.

Of these many families, one, early seated in Norfolk, is now represented by the Earl of Dudley, and bears Chequy Or and Azure, a bend Ermine. John de Warda is mentioned there in 1194 (Rot. Curiæ Regis): but their descent is traced no further back than the fourteenth century, when another John Ward held the manor of Kirby-Bedon. About two hundred years after that, his descendant, Edward Ward of Postwick, first settled at Bixley, and built old Bixley Hall. He was bountifully blessed with progeny—nine sons and three daughters had fallen to his share; and to lighten the burden of this heavy freight, one of them, William, the sixth son, was, so to speak, heaved overboard, and despatched to push his fortune in London. He succeeded far beyond all anticipation. He became the rich man of the family; the famous goldsmith who was jeweller to Henrietta Maria, knighted by Charles L, and one of the most eminent bankers in the City. But he was not content with money, and sought for something more. “It so chanced that Edward Lord Dudley,“The last Lord Dudley was the grandfather of Frances Sutton, for whom he had little regard, betaking himself wholly to a concubine, by whom he had diverse children, and so far wasted his estate in support of her and them, that he left not much of that fair inheritance that had descended to him, and even it so clogged with debt, that for the disengaging thereof, he married her to Humble Ward.”—Banks. having much impaired his fortune by irregular living, was advised by his friends to apply to Mr. Ward, as an honest and substantial banker, for £20,000; who told his Lordship at once that the money was ready on producing satisfactory security, which his Lordship soon did. Upon which Mr. Ward told his Lord- ship that he thought he might be supplied better and more honourably than by borrowing; and being asked how? Mr. Ward said he had an only son, and his Lordship a granddaughter (named Frances), and if they might be married together, he would supply more than the present want. My Lord listened to it; the match was soon concluded; and so the two families and estates became united. When Sutton Lord Dudley died, the married couple were not equal in honour: She, Lady Baroness Dudley; her husband only Mr. Humble Ward; but he, meriting much for seasonable Supplies brought to his Majesty, was in Consideration thereof, first knighted at Oxford in 1643, and shortly after created Lord Ward of Birmingham.”—Bloomfield's Norfolk. Here, at least, there was no circumlocution or beating about the bush. Lady Dudley’s disposal in marriage was a perfectly simple and straightforward transaction. Both parties went directly to the point without hesitation or embarrassment, and struck their bargain openly in the face of day. Now the process may be better dissimulated and more artistically veiled; but can there be any doubt that it is carried on as freely in the nineteenth as in the seventeenth century? The ninth Lord Ward, a very clever but extremely eccentric man, received an Earldom that became extinct at his death in 1833, but was revived in 1860 in favour of the next but one in succession, William, eleventh Lord.

The elder line continued at Bixley till 1770. Sir Edward Ward, who was twice High Sheriff of Norfolk, was created a Baronet at the restoration, and had seven successors in the title. The heir of the last Sir Edward was his aunt Susan, the wife of Neil, third Earl of Rosebery. She enjoyed the inheritance only for a single year, and died childless, having bequeathed her Norfolk estate to her husband, who transmitted it to his descendants by a second marriage.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, de War’.