Previous studies of the distortion of the electric double layer around a charged sphere have assumed that the electric stresses are small compared with the viscous stresses. The flow around the particle is therefore changed only slightly by the presence of the charge cloud. This change is measured by the Hartmann number, and in § 6 we remove the restriction that it should be small. It is found that the previous linearized theory is sufficiently accurate for typical experimental values of the Hartmann number. Previous studies have also assumed that the potential at the surface of the particle is small. This assumption is removed in § 7 of this paper. For values of the non-dimensional surface potential smaller than 2 the predictions are altered by less than 10 %. For higher values the differences between linear and nonlinear theory are not negligible, especially when the charge cloud is thin compared with the radius of the charged sphere.