Early Life
Woodard was born at Basildon Hall in Essex (now known as Barstable Hall) the son of a country gentleman of limited means and was brought up and educated privately by his pious and devout mother. In 1834 he entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford (later merged into Hertford College, Oxford), where his academic studies were interrupted by marriage - although he took a pass degree in 1840.
As a result of the influence of his mother, Woodard's religious sympathies were Evangelical when he first became a student at Oxford, but, whilst he was there, he soon found himself strongly drawn to the growing Tractarian Movement and, as a result, developed Anglo-Catholic sympathies which he kept for the remainder of his life.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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