Mary Ward (1585–1645) Ward, Mary Author Katelyn Ekker Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Katelyn Ekker and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Education Gender Obedience Women Education Humanism Literature and the Arts Women Writers Published file. Updated metadata proofed updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Katelyn Ekker Katelyn Ekker

Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Overview

Mary Ward was an English Catholic who refused to conform to the religious and gender expectations of early modern England. Refusing to conform to the state religion of the Church of England, she founded a religious institute for women, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Congregation of Jesus, now also known as the Sisters of Loreto, which still exists today. Branches of Ward’s order currently sponsor more than 200 schools worldwide.

Ward came from a famously Catholic family; two of her uncles were executed for their involvement in the 1605 Gunpower Plot, and her father was questioned regarding it. Ward kept detailed records of her life, and two of her followers composed an account of her life after she died. A more recent biography and five-volume German publication of documents related to her life and religious mission solidify her as an important figure in the religious and social strife of the period.

Life

Christened as Joan Ward, Mary Ward was an English Catholic from Yorkshire whose family experienced significant persecution in the last decades of the 16th century. Her family’s home was burned down when she was about 10 years old in an anti-Catholic riot. Like many English people who were unwilling to become Protestants and adhere to the law that required they attend the Church of England, Ward left England for Europe.

Upon leaving England in 1606, she joined the order the Poor Clares, a Franciscan order of nuns, in Flanders, but left it the next year to establish another house of Poor Clares for Englishwomen only, called the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Congregation of Jesus, which still exists today. Scholar Alexanra Verini summarizes Ward’s unique approach: Ward’s Society of Jesus was highly unusual as it was governed by women, unenclosed, and available for apostolic work worldwide, including the support of priests on the English Mission. In taking the step to found her society, Ward went against the establishment on multiple fronts: she was inherently at odds with her nation’s religion, but she also fell out of favor with the papacy since, by promoting women’s active ministry, she defied the Post-Tridentine prescription of enclosure for religious women.

The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary was non-monastic and non-cloistered. The members of the order did not wear habits, instead dressing in modest ordinary clothes. Like the male Jesuits, Ward’s new order served communities through teaching and pastoral care. In fact, Ward closely modeled the oaths for her new order on those of the Jesuits.

Yet male religious institutions, especially the Jesuits, rejected the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary even though it had the approval of Pope Paul V because it clashed with their beliefs on the role of women within society and the family. Ward was arrested multiple times and accused of heresy, spending a year in prison in Munich in 1631.

Ward and Women’s Education

During the early modern period, girls had limited options for formal education in Protestant countries like England. In 1609, Ward opened the first free public school for English girls and local French Catholic girls in Saint-Omer, France. Unlike traditional convent schools, Ward’s schools followed a more secular, humanist tradition, offering girls a similar program of study to what boys received in grammar schools. She went on to found several other schools in Italy and Germany. Due to the severe anti-Catholic sentiment in her home country, none of Ward’s schools were opened in England until 1639. Mary Ward died in 1645 at one of her schools in Yorkshire during a siege that was part of the English Civil Wars.

Legacy

Ward left behind extensive writings pertaining to her life and Institute. These writings cover her life as a young girl in England, her early religious life in France as a member of the more traditional Poor Clares, and her establishing of her new non-cloistered order. A set of 50 paintings of Ward’s life, completed by different artists in the second half of the 17th century, also survive in Augsburg, Germany. The religious order of women she founded has two branches today, one known as The Congregation of Jesus and the other as The Institute of Jesus, with about 4000 members. The order she founded was formally recognized by the Catholic Church in 1877. In 2009, she was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XI, which is a formal recognition of her spiritual heroism and one step on the path to official sainthood.

Key Print Sources Bedford, Ronald, A Gendered Genre: Autobiographical Writings by Three Early Modern Women in Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation 1550–1660, ed. Ronald Before, Lloyd Davis, and Phillippa Kelly. Ashgate, 2007. Kentworthy-Browne, Christina, ed. Mary Ward (1585–1645): A Briefe Relation…with Autobiographical Fragments and a Selection of Letters. Boydell Press for the Catholic Record Society, 2008. O’Brien, Susan. Ward, Mary (1585–1645), Roman Catholic nun and founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 29. Oxford University Press, 22 Sep. 2005. Martin, Randall. Women Writers in Renaissance England. Addison Wesley Longman, 1997.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. Mary Ward. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/women%20writers/ward.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023. Caldwell, Simon. The First Sister of Feminism. The Independent. 10 Jun. 2009. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-first-sister-of-feminism-1702163.html. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018. Our Foundress Mary Ward. Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. https://www.ibvm.org/home/mary-ward/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023. Verini, Alexandra. Mary Ward and the Society of Jesus. Early Modern Women: Lives, Texts, Objects. Ed. Martine van Elk. 24 Apr. 2017. https://martinevanelk.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/mary-ward-and-the-society-of-jesus/.