“A Village with a Heritage Nun Could guess”

Mary Ward (1585 – 1645) Foundress and Pioneer

“I hope in God it will be seen that women in time to come will do much.” – Mary Ward, 1617

Mary Ward was born Joan Ward in 1585 in Mulwith, Ripon, Yorkshire into a staunch Roman Catholic family. Her parents were Marmaduke and Ursula Ward (nee Wright). She took the name Mary by confirmation. She lived with her grandmother Ursula Wright a Ploughland Hall, Welwick between 1589-1594. She spent a brief period at Ripley Castle home of her relative Samspon Ingleby. In 1595 her home at Mulwith was burned down in an anti-Catholic riot and Mary moved to Newby. Her immediate family moved to the Percy estate at Alnwick in Northumberland. Mary, however, did not go with them. Instead she went to live with other relatives in Nidderdale.

In 1599, Mary came to OSGODBY to live with her relative Sir Ralph Babthorpe and his family at OSGODBY HALL. It was a highly religious household with a priest secretly in residence, with a daily routine of prayer and instruction, One day, she sat sewing with her cousin Barbara Babthorpe, with a servant, named Margaret Garrett who told them of the severe punishment inflicted on a religious whose conduct had given scandal. On hearing this story, Mary received so much light from God on the excellency of the religious life that she decided to embrace this state of perfection.

Mary’s father had proposed her for marriage on two occasions, at aged 10 and 12. In 1605, Edmund Neville became a suitor for Mary’s hand. She refused him and declared her desire to be religious. Her father took her to London to Father Richard Holtby and he consented to Mary’s desire to enter religious life.

It was at this time, Mary’s uncles, John and Christopher Wright, and Thomas Percy who married her aunt Martha, were involved with and lost their lives in the gunpowder plot. Mary’s father was also examined as a possible conspirator but was not implicated. He was able to prove that he was in London about the proposed Neville marriage.

Mary travelled to Saint Omer, and became an extern Sister in a Convent of St Clares. Less than one year, Mary planned on opening a convent and this was established for English Poor Clares in Gravelines in the province of Flanders.