Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/433

 but when the whigs joined Canning in office in 1827, Williams became king's counsel; and on the accession of William IV (1830) he was made solicitor-general and attorney-general to Queen Adelaide, in the place of Lords Brougham and Denman, promoted to the offices of lord chancellor and lord chief justice respectively. On 28 Feb. 1834 he was appointed a baron of the exchequer; but, having sat in that court one term, he was knighted (16 April) and transferred to the king's bench in the place of Sir James Parke (afterwards Baron Wensleydale) [q. v.] In this office he remained till his death.

Williams died suddenly at his seat, Livermore Park, Suffolk, on 15 Sept. 1846, and was buried in the Temple Church on the 23rd of the same month. He married Harriett Katherine, only surviving daughter and heiress of Davies Davenport of Capethorne, the friend and patron of his father. There was no issue. His widow died at St. Germain-en-Laye on 28 Sept. 1861 (Gent. Mag. 1861, ii. 574).

As a judge Williams was painstaking and conscientious, and appeared to special advantage in criminal cases. Throughout his life he retained his taste for the classics, and his reported speeches are never without some classical allusion or quotation. He displayed talents as a writer, and contributed several articles to the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ particularly one (October 1821) on the Greek orators. He also wrote occasionally for the ‘Law Review.’

In personal appearance Williams was not prepossessing. He was diminutive of stature and severe of countenance, but was urbane in manner.

[Law Review, November 1846 (notice said to be by Lord Brougham); Law Mag. February 1847; Gent. Mag. November 1846; Foss's Hist. of Judges, ix. 314; Manchester School Reg. (Chetham Soc.).] 

WILLIAMS, JOHN (1792–1858), archdeacon of Cardigan, first rector of Edinburgh Academy and warden of Llandovery, was the youngest child of John Williams, vicar of Ystrad-meurig, by Jane, daughter of Lewis Rogers of Gelli, high sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1753.

His father, (1745–1818), was the eldest son of David Williams of Swyddffynnon, one of the earliest ‘exhorters’ among the Welsh methodists. He was educated at Ystrad-meurig grammar school under Edward Richard [q. v.] After keeping school at Cardigan (1766–70) and other places, and serving a curacy at Ross, Herefordshire (1771–6), he succeeded Richard as master at Ystrad-meurig in August 1778. His pupils soon increased to nearly a hundred in number, and about 1790 it became necessary to build a schoolhouse, the work having been previously carried on in the parish church. ‘For some half-century it became the leading school in Wales, and rose to the position of a divinity school, supplying a considerable number of candidates for holy orders’ (, Diocesan Hist. of St. David's, p. 224; cf., Beauties of South Wales, p. 469). Traditions of his mastership and of his classical learning are still current in the county (Cymru, iv. 45, 127, vi. 124, with portrait). Besides his mastership he held several clerical appointments in the diocese, and was the author of a ‘Dissertation on the Pelagian Heresy’ (Carmarthen, 1808, 8vo). He died on 20 March 1818. Two of his brothers, Evan and Thomas, established a bookselling and publishing business at No. 11 Strand, London, where, between 1792 and 1835, they published a large number of books relating to Wales (Enwogion Sir Aberteifi, pp. 152–4;, Cambr. Bibliography, p. 666). Another brother, David (1751–1836), prebendary of Tytherington, was father of Charles James Blasius Williams [q. v.] During his latter years John Williams the elder was assisted and eventually succeeded at the school by his eldest son, David (1785?–1825), a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, to whom Lockhart addressed his ‘open letters,’ entitled ‘Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,’ Edinburgh, 1819, 3 vols. 8vo (, Life and Letters of Lockhart, i. 212–25).

John Williams the younger (David's brother) was born at Ystrad-meurig on 11 April 1792. He was educated chiefly at his father's school, but after an interval of three years spent in teaching at Chiswick he went for a short time to Ludlow school, whence he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, matriculating on 30 Nov. 1810, and graduating B.A. in 1814, when he passed a ‘triumphant examination’ (, i. 57). He proceeded M.A. in 1838. Like Dr. Arnold, who was one of his four companions in the first class, Williams chose for himself the career of a public-school master. He was for four years (1814–18) immediate assistant to Henry Dison Gabell [q. v.] at Winchester, and for another two years assistant to the brothers Charles and George Richards at Hyde Abbey school in the same city. In 1820 Thomas Burgess (1756–1837) [q. v.], then bishop of St. David's, offered him the vicarage of Lampeter in his native county, with the expressed hope that he would carry on the school established there by the previous vicar, Eliezer Williams [q. v.] He accepted, and through his influ-