733 



WILLIAMS, EDWARD. 



WILLIAMS, REV. JOHN. 



730 



he had bought Dr. Bates's collection of books for between 500?. and 

 600/. to add to his own. He directed his trustees to erect a suitable 

 building, the site for which was purchased by them in 1727, in Red- 

 cross-street; and the library was opened in 1729. All persons may 

 obtain admission on application to one of the trustees. Since the 

 library was established, very considerable additions have been made 

 to it by legacies, as well as by contributions in money and books. It 

 contains nearly 20,000 volumes. 



WILLIAMS, EDWARD, known by the Bardic name of lolo Mor- 

 gan wg, was a poet of merit both in Welsh and English. He was born in 

 the parish of Llancarvan in Glamorganshire, about the year 1747. His 

 English poems, lyric and pastoral, in two volumes, published in 1794, 

 present perhaps the most curious list of subscribers that ever was 

 attached to any publication. It begins with the name of the Prince of 

 Wales; it contains those of Mrs. Barbauld, of William Bowles, gene- 

 ralissimo of the Creek nation, Sir William Jones, Miss Hannah More, 

 Lord Orford, Thomas Paine, Samuel llogers, Miss Anna Seward," John 

 Home Tooke, Wilberforce, and General Washington. He afterwards 

 published two volumes of Welsh hymns, ' Salmau yr Eglwys yn yr 

 Anialwch.' Williams worked through life at his trade as a stone- 

 mason. He lived for some time iu London, and was anxious to 

 emigrate to America, but returned to Wales, and lived and died there. 

 He was intimately acquainted with the literature of his country : he 

 was one of the editors of the ' Myvyrian Archaiology,' and he was, in 

 1820, about to publish a collection of documents illustrative of Welsh 

 history, but seems to have been prevented for want of sufficient support. 

 These documents were announced for publication by the Welsh 

 Manuscript Society, under the editorship of his son, Mr. Taliesin 

 Williams, who published, in 1829, his father's ' Cyfrinach Beirdd Ynys 

 Prydain ' (or Secret of the Bards of the Isle of Britain), but we are not 

 aware that they have been published. lolo died at Flemingstone in 

 Glamorganshire, on the 17th of December 1826 ; and Southey says, in 

 his Life of Cowpe' 1 , " It grieves me to think what curious knowledge, 

 and how much of it, has probably perished with poor old Edward 

 Williams." From some letters by him, which were printed during his 

 lifetime in the third volume of the ' Cambrian Register,' it seems that 

 he had written his autobiography, in which he had introduced an 

 account of Welsh literature during hia own time, as well as his 

 opinions of Welsh literature in general. 



WILLIAMS, JOHN, lord keeper of the great seal of England, and 

 afterwards archbishop of York, was the son of Edward Williams of 

 Aber-Conway, in Caernarvonshire in Wales, where he was born on the 

 25th of March 1582. He received his earliest education at the public 

 school at Ruthin, and entered a student of St. John's, Cambridge, on 

 the 5th of November 1599. Connected with a great Welsh family, he 

 was early looked upon as one likely to bring distinction on the 

 principality. Being largely supplied with money, he distinguished 

 himself at college by a gay life and profuse expenditure. " From a 

 youth and so upward," says his entertaining biographer, Hacket, " he 

 had not a fist to hold money, for he did not only lay out, but scatter, 

 spending all that he had, and somewhat for which he could be 

 trusted." Yet he was a diligent and ardent student. He had a 

 powerful memory, and great facility in learning languages and apply- 

 ing terms of art. When he afterwards sat on the bench of the Court 

 of Chancery, and lawyers who professed a contempt for his legal 

 acquirements endeavoured to puzzle him with pedantic technicalities, 

 it is recorded that he used to retort, to the mirth of the whole court, 

 by drawing upon his old studies in scholastic logic. He required 

 little rest, and three hours of sleep contented him. " He surrendered 

 up his whole time to dive into the immense well of knowledge that 

 hath no bottom. He read the best, he heard the best, he conferred 

 with the best, exscribed, committed to memory, disputed : he had some 

 work continually upon the loom. And though he never did so much 

 in this unwearied industry as himself desired, he did far more than 



all that did highly value him could expect All perceived that 



a Fellowship was a garland too little for his head, and that he that 

 went his pace would quickly go farther than St. John's walks." In 

 1605 he took the degree of Master of Arts. He entered into holy 

 orders in 1609, accepting a small living in Norfolk, and in 1611 he 

 was instituted to the rectory of Grafton Regis in Northamptonshire. 

 In the same year the foundation of his subsequent greatness was laid 

 by his being chosen chaplain to the Lord Chancellor Egerton. He 

 had been able to secure the favourable notice of King James by his 

 conduct iu relation to a slight dispute between his majesty and the 

 University of Cambridge ; and his new office, " a nest for an eagle," as 

 Hacket calls it, gave him such access to the royal person as enabled 

 him to profit by the favourable impression. Fortunately for himself, 

 he refused the offer of remaining in his chaplaincy under Bacon 

 perhaps his worldly shrewdness taught him that the soil was under- 

 mined beneath. 



Having been made one of the chaplains in ordinary to the king, in 

 1619, he preached before James at Theobalds, and the sermon was 

 printed by command of his majesty, who soon afterwards gave him the 

 rich deanery of Salisbury. But James could only issue his favours 

 through one channel; and desiring to befriend Williams, recom- 

 mended him to seek the patronage of Buckingham. He adopted the 

 friendly hint, and acted his part in reconciling the conscience of the 

 favourite's Roman Catholic bride to the Church of England. Of a 



paper, containing the elements of the doctrinal belief of the Church of 

 England, which he drew up on this occasion, twenty copies were 

 printed by order of the king. It was by the advice of Williams that 

 Buckingham adopted the bold project of sacrificing Bacon to save 

 himself from public indignation. The project was more successful 

 than ordinary human foresight could have anticipated, and though it 

 was an unpopular measure to renew the practice of committing the 

 great seal to the hands of an ecclesiastic, the favourite's gratitude 

 overcame his caution. Williams was sworn in as lord keeper on the 

 10th of July 1621. In the same month he was made biahop of 

 Lincoln, and he was allowed to hold the deanery of Westminster (in 

 which he had been installed in 1620) and the rectory of Walgrave in 

 commendam. He managed to preserve possession of so many ecclesi- 

 astical preferments, that, according to Dr. Heylyn's remark, " he was 

 a perfect diocese within himself, as being bishop, dean, prebend, re- 

 sidentiary, and parson, all at once." Bacon was not the only person 

 on whose ruin Williams desired to rise ; he was indefatigable in his 

 endeavours to have Archbishop Abbot deprived of his office, on account 

 of his having accidentally shot Lord Zouch's deer-keeper. [ABBOT, 

 GEORGE.] It was part of Williams's policy to employ, with the vast funds 

 which were at his command, a crowd of court spies, whose information 

 he turned to his own advantage. When the Marquis Inoiosa, the 

 Spanish ambassador, had succeeded in terrifying James into the belief 

 that he was a prisoner in the hands of Buckingham, Williams was 

 able to inform the favourite of the cause of the king's altered conduct, 

 and to suggest a remedy. Buckingham however appears to have soon 

 entertained a fear that the lord keeper was acquiring too great a share 

 of independent power, and his ruin was resolved on. Laud, whom he 

 was the first to patronise, had also become his deadly enemy, and 

 when he perceived that the keeper was sinking, " he shunned him," 

 says Hacket, " as the old Romans, in their superstition, walked aloof 

 from that soil which was blasted with thunder." Laud's tell-tale 

 diary is full of ominous dreams about Williams, in which the wish is 

 father to the thought. In the meantime Buckingham himself sunk in 

 the favour of James, and Williams remained lord keeper till the 

 accession of Charles, when, in October 1626, he was deprived of his 

 office. Williams was ordered not to continue in his seat in the House 

 of Lords, but he was not a man to be intimidated. He retained his 

 place on the bench of bishops, and, incited apparently by personal 

 feelings, supported, as far as his High Church principles would permit, 

 the popular cause, and exerted himself in promoting the Petition of 

 Right. His relentless rival Laud raised against him, in the Star 

 Chamber, a charge of betraying the king's secrets, contrary to his oath 

 as a privy councillor. He was convicted of subornation of perjury in 

 defending himself from this charge, fined 10,000?., suspended from 

 his offices, and condemned to imprisonment during the royal pleasure. 

 At the meeting of the Long Parliament in 1640, he was released, and 

 resumed his seat in the House of Lords. A revolution had now taken 

 place in the court; he was received into favour, and in the following 

 year translated to the archiepiscopal see of York. He retired during 

 the civil war to Aber-Conway in Wales, and held out Conway Castle 

 for the king. He died on the 25th of March 1650. Clarendon with 

 some reason charges Williams with being vain, perfidious, and re- 

 vengeful. Weldon and others accuse him of having been a corrupt 

 judge a charge receiving support from the lavish scale of his expen- 

 diture. The same writer charges him with profligacy : but according 

 to Hacket, who would not be likely to mention such a circumstance if 

 it were not true, he accidentally suffered a mutilation in youth, which 

 made continence in his case no virtue. In Collier's ' Annals of the 

 Stage ' (ii. 27) the curious circumstance is stated of his having been 

 charged with having the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' exhibited in 

 his house on Sunday, 27th September 1631. In 1637 he published, in 

 quarto, ' The Holy Table, name and thing, more antiently, properly, 

 and literally used under the New Testament than that of Altar.' 



(Hacket, Memorial offered to the great deservings of John Williams, 

 D.D. &c.; Phillips, Life of John Williams, &c.) 



WILLIAMS, REV. JOHN, 'the Apostle of Polynesia,' was born 

 June 29, 1796, at Tottenham, near London. In 1810 he was appren- 

 ticed to a furnishing ironmonger in the City Road ; and though his 

 indentures exempted him from the more laborious part of the busi- 

 ness, young Williams soon displayed an inclination for the workshop 

 rather than the counter, and became so skilful a workman that his 

 master, Mr. Tonkin, found it to his interest to employ him in executing 

 orders which required peculiar delicacy and skill. While thus em- 

 ployed he became connected with companions whose irreligious habits 

 threatened to exert a fatal influence upon his character ; but on a 

 Sabbath evening early in 1814 he was persuaded by Mrs. Tonkin, the 

 wife of his employer, to accompany her to the Tabernacle, Moorfields. 

 He there heard a sermon by the Rev. Timothy East, of Birmingham, 

 which so deeply impressed his mind as to lead to an entire change 

 of life. Before long he united himself with the religious community 

 assembling at the Tabernacle, joined a class of young men formed for 

 the purpose of mutual improvement, and became an active Sunday- 

 school teacher. Missionary operations were then exciting a very lively 

 interest at the Tabernacle, and after much deliberation Williams offered 

 his services to the London Missionary Society, in July 1816, and being 

 accepted, he was allowed to leave Mr. Tonkin before the expiration of 

 his apprenticeship. 



