124 ARTHUR j^:. SHIPLEY 



used his influence in his successor's favor. 

 Ward was renowned as a preacher; but his 

 later fame rested chiefly on his contributions to 

 the science of astronomy, and he is remem- 

 bered in the world of science mainly for his 

 theory of planetary motion. Ward and 

 Wallis — but the burden of the attack was 

 borne by the latter — laid bare Hobbes's at- 

 tempted proof of the squaring of the circle; 

 there was also a little controversy "on the 

 duplication of the cube," and mixed up with 

 these criticisms in the realm of pure reason 

 were political motives. Hobbes had not be- 

 gun to study Euclid until he was forty; and, 

 after Sir Henry Savile had founded his pro- 

 fessorships at Oxford, Wood says that not a 

 few of the foolish gentry "kept back their 

 sons" in order not "to have them smutted by 

 the black art" — so great was the fear and the 

 ignorance of the powers of mathematics. 

 Ward was a pluralist, as was the manner of 

 the times, and Burnet tells us "he was a pro- 

 found statesman but a very indifferent clergy- 

 man." Yet, what money he got he lavishly 

 spent on ecclesiastical and other purposes. As 



