Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/442

 Lucas, 1830), and ‘Procession to the Christening’ (engraved by L. Stocks for Finden's ‘British Gallery of Art’). The National Gallery possesses his ‘Neapolitan Peasants at a Fountain,’ ‘Wayside in Italy,’ and ‘The Tambourine,’ and the last two, which form part of the Vernon collection, were engraved by C. Rolls for the ‘Art Journal.’ Some of Williams's designs were engraved for the ‘Amulet’ (1827–30) and the ‘Literary Souvenir’ (1836). In April 1828 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, exhibiting annually until 1833, when he resigned. Williams was much esteemed by the residents in Rome, where he was a familiar figure for nearly sixty years, and his studio was one of the recognised attractions for English visitors. He died in Rome on 27 July 1885 in his eighty-sixth year, and his remaining works were sold at Christie's in the following year.

[Athenæum, 1885, ii. 185; Times, 4 Aug. 1885; Art Journal, 1864; Roget's Hist. of the ‘Old Watercolour’ Society.] 

WILLIAMS, PETER (1722–1796), Welsh biblical commentator, was the eldest son of Owen and Elizabeth Williams of West Marsh, near Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, where he was born on 7 Jan. 1722. His mother was a descendant of Dr. Lewis Bayly, bishop of Bangor. Both parents died before Peter was twelve years of age, and he was afterwards brought up by a maternal uncle, on whose farm he worked until eighteen. He then went to the grammar school at Carmarthen, where he stayed three years (1740–3). A sermon by Whitefield, who visited the town in April 1743, left a deep impression on him. Having kept an elementary school for one year at Conwil Elfed, he was ordained in 1744 and licensed to the curacy of Eglwys Cummin, where he also kept school. He was, however, suspected of methodism, and had to leave at the end of his first year. Though recommended by Griffith Jones (1683–1761) [q. v.], the evangelical vicar of the neighbouring church of Llanddowror, he was during the next few months driven from one curacy to another, till in 1746 he joined the newly formed association of Welsh Calvinistic methodists. In common with all the earlier members of that body he had no intention of severing his connection with the church of England, and in after life he brought up two of his sons as clergymen of its communion. For the next ten or twelve years he was an itinerant preacher, visiting the less evangelised parts of Wales and the borders, and, excepting Howel Harris [q. v.], suffering perhaps more persecution than any of his contemporaries. Being an anti-Jacobite as well as methodist, he was on one occasion locked up for the night by Sir W. W. Wynn in the kennels at Wynnstay (Cymru, i. 43, 72). About 1759 it occurred to him to utilise the press as an instrument for evangelical work, and he thereafter became the chief contributor to the religious literature of Wales during the eighteenth century. His greatest undertaking was the publication at his own risk of a family edition of the Welsh bible with annotations of his own at the end of each chapter, this being the first Welsh commentary on the whole bible ever issued. This was also the first time that a bible was printed in Wales. The work was issued in shilling parts, being the second Welsh book so published. The first part appeared in 1767, and the whole work, including the Apocrypha, Edmund Prys's Psalter, and two maps by Richard Morris, was completed and also issued in volume form in 1770 (Carmarthen, 4to). The first impression consisted of 3,600 copies, which were sold at the moderate price of 1l. each, strongly bound; a second edition of 6,400 copies appeared from the same press in 1779–1781; and a third, issued from Trevecca in 1797, consisting of four thousand copies. Rowlands (Cambrian Bibliography, p. 632) mentions another Trevecca edition in 1788, but this is an error. Quite a dozen subsequent editions, some of them profusely illustrated, have been issued during this century, and a copy of ‘Peter Williams's Bible’ has long been considered indispensable in almost every Welsh household.

In 1773 Williams issued a concordance to the Welsh bible under the title of ‘Mynegeir Ysgrythurol’ (Carmarthen, 4to). This was largely based on a smaller work by Abel Morgan, published in 1730 at Philadelphia, U.S.A.; a second edition, revised and considerably enlarged, was issued by Williams's son-in-law, David Humphreys, at Carmarthen in 1809; a third, from Dolgelly, in 1820, and there have been several subsequent reprints.

Williams's next great work was the publication (in conjunction with David Jones, a baptist minister of Pontypool) of four thousand copies of John Canne's bible with additional marginal references and explanatory notes of his own at the foot (Trevecca, 1790, small 8vo; 2nd edit. 1812). Alterations were also made by Williams in the text. The patronage of the methodist association had been promised for this work, but was suddenly withdrawn on the eve of publication, with the result that Williams lost