Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/686

 bible class. He was a member of the theological board and court of the University of Wales; also of the council of the Bangor College. After suffering for nearly two years from arterial disease, he died at Bala on 11 May 1911, and was buried in the churchyard of Llanycil, Merionethshire, the parish in which Bala is situated. On 31 Dec. 1884 he married Mary, eldest daughter of Urias Bromley, Old Hall, Chester, who survives him without issue.

Williams made his mark by his edition of ‘Gildas, with English translation and notes,’ pt. i. 1899; pt. ii. 1901 (Cymrodorion Record series). Various magazine articles and separate papers, e.g. ‘Some Aspects of the Christian Church in Wales in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries’ (1895); ‘The Four Disciples of Illtud’ (1897); the article on the Welsh church in the new edition (1889–96) of the ‘Encyclopædia Cambrensis’ (‘Gwyddoniadur Cymreig’); a review of Heinrich Zimmer's ‘Keltische Kirche’ (1901) and ‘Pelagius in Irland’ (1901) in the ‘Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie’ (1903); the article ‘Church (British)’ in Hastings's ‘Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics’ (1910) prepared the way for his magnum opus, ‘Christianity in Early Britain,’ which was issued by the Clarendon press in February 1912. He had generally indicated his results in the Davies lecture, delivered at Birkenhead on 8 June 1905. During his last illness, Williams was engaged on a second revision of the proofs of his work, and left it to his colleagues, the Revs. D. Phillips and J. O. Thomas, to see through the press. As an historian of Celtic Christendom, Williams easily took first rank, not merely by his new and careful research into primary sources, but by his absolute freedom from sectarian bias, his excellent judgment, and his application to history, despite the Germans, of the Newtonian principle hypotheses non fingo; his work forms a basis on which all later research must build.

In addition to the above, he published, inter alia, in Welsh: 1. ‘Yr Epistol at y Colossiaid,’ &c., Bala, 1886. 2. ‘Yr Epistol at y Galatiaid: cyfiethiad newydd [together with that of 1620] … a nodiadau. Gyda map,’ Bala, 1892 (this and the preceding were new and annotated versions for Sunday school use). 3. ‘Y Sacramentau: anerchiad agoriadol,’ &c., Bala, 1894. 4. ‘De Imitatione Christi … Rhagdraeth,’ &c., Bala, 1907 (the introduction by Williams, the translation by another hand). He also edited Lewis Edwards's ‘Holiadau Athrawiaethol,’ Bala, 1897. 

WILLIAMS, JOHN CARVELL (1821–1907), nonconformist politician, born at Stepney on 20 Sept. 1821, was the son of John Allen Williams by his wife Mary, daughter of John Carvell of Lambeth, and was brought up in connection with the old Stepney meeting, though his first membership was at Claremont chapel, Pentonville. From a private school he entered the office of a firm of proctors in Doctors' Commons. His life-work began on his appointment in 1847 as secretary to the British Anti-State Church Association, founded in 1844 by Edward Miall [q.v.]. Its change of name to the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control was due to a suggestion by Williams. He remained secretary till 1877, when he was made chairman of the society's parliamentary committee, a post which he held till 1898, when he was made chairman of the executive committee; resigning this post in 1903 through failing eyesight, he was made vice-president. For over half a century Williams proved himself ‘the chief strategist of the nonconformist force, in its steady advance upon the privileged position of the Church of England.’ Williams occasionally preached, and to him was largely due the formation of a congregational church and the erection of its building in 1887 at Stroud Green. In 1900 he was chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales.

He entered parliament as liberal member for South Nottinghamshire in 1885, when his friends presented him with 1000l. In 1886 he was defeated, but he was returned in 1892 for the Mansfield division of Nottinghamshire, and retained that seat till 1900, retiring then on account of growing deafness. He was a chief promoter of the Burials Act in 1880 and of the Marriage Acts of 1886 (extending the hours for marriage from twelve to three o'clock; of this Act he was sole author) and 1898 (allowing nonconformist congregations to appoint their own registrars). In 1897 his friends presented him with 1000l. to mark the jubilee of his connection with the Liberation Society.