Williams, Griffith

WILLIAMS, GRIFFITH: Church of England bishop of Ossory; b. at Treveilian (a hamlet near Carnarvon), Wales, 1589 or 1590; d. at Kilkenny (62 m. s.w. of Dublin), Ireland, Mar. 29, 1672. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and Jesus College, Cambridge (B.A., 1605-06). After ordination he served as a curate at Hanwell, Middlesex, became rector of Foxcott, Buckinghamshire, in 1608, which he resigned for St. Bennet Sherehog, London, in 1611-12, and was also lecturer in St. Peter's, Cheapside, and in St. Paul's Cathedral for a number of years. A High-churchman,, he incurred the hatred of the Puritans, and in 1616 the bishop of London was compelled by them to suspend Williams for his Resolution of Pilate, just then published. He then spent a short time in Cambridge, and, returning to London, gained the friendship of the extreme Puritan, Archbishop George Abbot (q.v.), and through Abbot's chancellor obtained the rectory of Llanilechid, Carnarvonshire. Here, however, he calve in conflict with his strongly Puritan diocesan, who, when Williams refused to resign his living for another, preferred charges against him, only to be reprimanded by Abbot, who licensed William to preach in several dioceses of the province of Canterbury. Four years later Williams returned to London, and after a year as chaplain to the earl of Montgomery, became, in 1626, rector of Trefdraeth, Anglesey, while in 1628 he was appointed a prebendary in Westminster, and in 1634 was instituted dean of Bangor. In 1641 he was consecrated bishop of Ossory, but within a month was driven back to England by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion. In England he was arrested by the Parliamentarians, but succeeded in obtaining a safe-conduct and joined King Charles as chaplain. He incurred fresh hostility from the enemies of the king by publishing his Yindicite regum, or, The Grand Rebellion (Oxford, 1643), which the Parliamentarians ordered to be publicly burned; and he followed this, within the year, by his Discovery of Mysteries, or, The Plots and Practices of a prevalent Faction in this present Parliament to overthrow the established Religion . . . and to subvert the fundamentall Lawes of this famous Kingdome. In revenge the Parliamentarians drove his family from their temporary home at Apethorpe, Northamptonshire, and confiscated his property,

but undauntedly he issued against them a third work, Jura majestatis; The Rights of Kings both in Church and State . . . and the Wickedness of the Faction of this pretended Parliament at Westminster (Oxford, 1644).

After another narrow escape from arrest while in London on the king's business, William contrived to make his way again to Ireland, but was back in England in 1645, when he vainly urged the Royalists to make firm stand against the Parliamentarian general, Thomas Mytton, in Anglesey. He later succeeded in returning to Ireland, where he was appointed rector of Rathfarnham, County Dublin, in 1647. Before the year was out, he had been driven out by the surrender of Dublin to the Parliamentarians, and after much hardship he managed to reach Llanllechid again, where he lived in abject poverty, refusing to accept either a rich living or a pension in return for submission to the Parliamentarian party. In 1651 his loyalty to the king again nearly cost him at least his liberty, but with the Restoration in 1660, when he was the first in Ireland to play publicly for the king, his position naturally became secure, and he was now able to publish his `0 'Antixpistov, the Great Antichrist revealed (London, 1660), in which he proved that Antichrist was the Westminster Assembly (q.v.).

Returning to his diocese, which was in sorry condition as a result of the war, he set about repairing the damage and restoring the cathedral which the Parliamentarians had injured, and it was at this same time that he published a quasi-autobiography, The Persecution and Oppression of John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, . . . and of Griffith Williams (London, 1664). Besides his bishopric, he held for several years the prebendary of Mayne, in his own see.

In addition to the works already mentioned and many sermons, etc., Williams wrote: The Delights of the Saints (London, 1622), Seven Golden Candlesticks, holding the Seven Greatest Lights of Christian Religion (1627), The True Church, shewed to all Men that Desire to be Members of the same (1629), The Right Way to the best Religion (1636), and, perhaps, An Examination of such Particulars in the Solemne League and Covenant as concern the Law; proving it to be destructive of the Lawes of England, both Ancient and Moderne (Oxford, 1644).

Bibliography: A. A Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. P. Bliss, iii. 952-956, 4 vols., London, 1813-20; DNB, lxi. 401-403; and his own works.