Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/424

 end Charles refused his consent to the abandonment of the prosecution (‘Letters and Papers of Sir J. Monson,’ Lambeth MSS. mxxx. Nos. 47, 48).

In November 1636, the year in which Williams's hope of a pardon was brought to an end, he published anonymously ‘The Holy Table, Name and Thing,’ a book setting forth his views on the position of the communion table, which was licensed for his own diocese on 30 Nov., and was evidently intended as a reply to Heylyn's ‘Coal from the Altar,’ licensed on 5 May. His ecclesiastical position was damaged by his moral fall. On 11 July 1637 he was sentenced by the Star-chamber for subornation of perjury to a fine of 10,000l. to the king and of 1,000 marks to Sir John Monson, whom he had also wronged. He was also deprived of the profits of all his benefices, and was to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. The high commission was invited to suspend him from the exercise of his function, an invitation complied with on 24 July (, ii. 416; sentence of suspension, State Papers, Dom. cclxiv. 43).

Williams was sent to the Tower, where Laud offered him freedom in the king's name if he would surrender his bishopric for one in Wales or Ireland, and give up his other benefices. He must also acknowledge himself guilty of the charge brought against him, and to have erred in writing ‘The Holy Table, Name and Thing’ (Lambeth MSS. mxxx. fol. 68 b). The terms, dictated—at least in part—by ecclesiastical partisanship, were not accepted, and on 14 Feb. 1639 Williams was again before the Star-chamber on a charge of having in his house at Buckden certain letters written by Osbaldiston in which Laud was styled ‘the little urchin’ and ‘the little meddling hocus-pocus’ [see ]. Williams was condemned to pay 5,000l. to the king and 3,000l. to Laud.

When the Short parliament met in 1640 an attempt seems to have been made to come to an understanding with Williams. He is heard of as being at Lambeth on 30 April, and on 2 May ‘The Holy Table, Name and Thing’ was called in, it is said, with Williams's consent (Notes of Intelligence, May 5; Rossingham to Conway, May 12, State Papers, Dom. cccclii. 37, ccccliii. 24). Parliament was, however, dissolved on 5 May, and Williams remained in the Tower. His prospects cannot have been improved by the discovery among Hampden's papers of a letter from Williams asking Hampden to move in the House of Commons that the bishop ought to have his writ to sit in the House of Lords (ib.) When the Long parliament met the government fancied they had found a way out of the difficulty by sending to Williams a writ empowering him to take his seat on condition of his giving bail to surrender himself as a prisoner at the end of the parliament, unless the king had in the meanwhile granted him a pardon. The House of Lords, however, intervened, and on 16 Nov. ordered his unconditional release, upon which the king relieved him from the other consequences of the sentence against him in the Star-chamber. Williams's first use of his recovered authority as dean of Westminster was to permit the removal of the communion table at St. Margaret's to the middle of the church, that it might be used in that position by the House of Commons on the 22nd (Commons' Journal, ii. 32).

In the House of Lords of the Long parliament Williams's place was marked out in advance as the leader of the party aiming at a compromise between the admirers of the Book of Common Prayer as it stood and the extreme puritans who desired to get rid of it altogether. He was named chairman of a committee appointed on 1 March at the motion of the puritan Lord Saye and Sele to consider ‘all innovations in the church concerning religion’ (Lords' Journal, iv. 174). The committee appointed a sub-committee, which also placed Williams in the chair, and in which broad-minded prelates, such as Ussher, Morton, and Hall, sat with Sanderson, representing the Laudian section of the church, and Burgess and Marshall, whose leanings were distinctly towards presbyterianism (, ii. 146).

Before the result of these deliberations could appear, Williams was involved in the political whirlpool. When, on 9 May, four bishops were consulted by Charles on the question whether he could conscientiously give his consent to the bill for Strafford's attainder, Williams was the only one who declared in the affirmative. The ground taken by him was that the king's public conscience might be satisfied by the opinions of the judges even if his private conscience were not (Strafford Letters, ii. 432;, ii, 161). On the other hand he urged Charles to reject the bill taking away his right of dissolving parliament unless with the consent of parliament itself. When the bill had been passed, Williams saw clearly what its consequences would be. ‘Will it be possible,’ he asked Charles, ‘for your truest lieges to do you service any more?’ (ib. ii. 162).

The excitement which prevailed in the parliament and in the country could not fail