John William Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley (1781—1833), became the 4th Viscount Dudley and Ward in 1823. Educated at Oxford, John William Ward entered parliament in 1802, and except for a few months he remained in the House of Commons until he succeeded his father in the peerage. In 1827 he was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Canning and then under Goderich and under Wellington, resigning office in May 1828.

As foreign minister he was only a cipher; but he was a man of considerable learning and had some reputation as a writer and a talker. Dudley took an interest in the foundation of the University of London, and his Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff were published by the bishop (Edward Copleston) in 1840. He was created Viscount Ednam and Earl of Dudley in 1827, and when he died unmarried on 6 March 1833 these titles became extinct.