WILLIAMS, Robert (c.1627-80), of Conway and Penrhyn, Llandegai, Caern.

This Member’s grandfather, Robert Williams of Pen-yr-allt, Conway, was the older brother of Archbishop John Williams, from a long-established Caernarfonshire family, proud of its military exploits against the invading Saxons.12J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), 6. The Williams’ ancestral properties were Penrhyn and Cochwillan, the latter in Llanllechid parish, but despite their descent, the archbishop had to buy them to secure his title. The mother of the archbishop and his brother was a member of the family of Wynn of Gwydir in the Conwy valley.13Oxford DNB, ‘John Williams (1582-1650)’. Gruffith Williams, this Member’s father, was a royalist commissioner of array throughout the civil war, but began to reassess his political allegiances in the light of his uncle’s attempts after 1646 to ride the political storm.14Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 289. In 1650, Gruffith Williams inherited the Penrhyn and Cochwillan estates from his uncle, but had to fight off claims on the property from Sir Owen Wynn of Gwydir, which left both Williams and Wynn willing to refer their dispute to arbitration.15Cal. Wynn Pprs. 322, 323, 324, 329, 330-3.

The paternal grandmother of Robert Williams, this Member, was a Griffith of Cefnamwlch, his mother an aunt of Griffith Bodurda*. Nothing can be gleaned of his early life, but he was probably educated at home. He may have travelled abroad as part of his education, during the 1640s, since a letter of 1647 makes passing mention of a relative of the archbishop, ‘Robyn Williams’, who had gone to France.16Cal. Wynn Pprs. 304. This is unlikely to have been a business or diplomatic trip, since in March 1648 a secretary of the archbishop wrote to his employer in despairing terms about the difficulties they faced in finding Williams gainful employment

We have, I conceive, tried all ways and have failed in Mr Robert Williams his business. He is now troubled with a kind of an ague, which will excuse him from marching with the general, as he intends to do northward, and by the next I shall humbly desire to know whether your Grace would have him go that way, seeing that it is feared the Scots and they are like to have some squabbling. In the mean time (if he can walk abroad), he may go and wait upon the L[ord] G[eneral] [Sir Thomas Fairfax*] and give all observance to him.17NLW, MS 9063E/1858.

Williams is not known ever to have joined the New Model army, even in a civilian capacity. He seems not to have been involved in the disbanding of soldiers in north Wales, a task which had attracted the intervention of the archbishop himself, whose informant noted how Robert Williams was unencumbered by any commitments

The times are subject to change, and he being disengaged upon the disbanding of the life guard, and having not yet entered upon the other ways, your Grace may dispose of him as you shall think fit, without (I conceive) giving any just exceptions to any. However, I take not upon me to advise your Grace herein. There are two or three able merchants would take his brother if the times were a little settled, and they say I shall have some resolution of them within a fortnight or three weeks.18NLW, MS 9063E/1858.

Williams’s father was still alive, and with no estate to inherit, or family responsibilities to assume, Williams was evidently a footloose character. A resolution of a sort emerged in 1652 with his marriage to Jane, daughter of Serjeant John Glynne*, who at that time had retreated from the national stage after the trauma of being expelled from the Long Parliament as one of the Eleven Members.19Cal. Wynn Pprs. 327, 333. The marriage meant that the beleaguered Gruffith Williams could benefit from the legal advice of his son’s new father-in-law, but it was a change in the fortunes of Glynne, not Robert Williams, that opened up new possibilities for the latter outside Caernarfonshire. Glynne was appointed lord protector’s serjeant after Oliver Cromwell* assumed the title of lord protector, and this marked a new upward turn in the lawyer’s fortunes. By the summer of 1654, he was thought likely to be made lord chief baron of the exchequer.20Supra, ‘John Glynne’.

By 1656, Glynne was the principal power-broker in north-west Wales, so when on 31 July 1656 he asked the leading Caernarfonshire gentry, including Robert Williams’ father and his erstwhile combatant over the archbishop’s estates, Sir Owen Wynn, to support his son-in-law for one of the county seats in Parliament, success was virtually guaranteed.21Cal. Wynn Pprs. 346. Robert Williams was active in canvassing the gentry against the electoral ambitions of his flexible rival, Thomas Madrin*, whom he duly defeated at the poll.22Cal. Wynn Pprs. 347.

Unfortunately for the historian, another ‘Mr Williams’, Henry Williams of Radnorshire, was elected to the same Parliament, and the clerk made no attempt to distinguish them in the Journal. However, Henry Williams had by 1656 already served in a Parliament, and had been active in parliamentarian administration since the mid-1640s, so it seems reasonable to assume that this experienced figure was the Mr Williams who was more active in the House. Discussion of the committee appointments which the two may possibly have shared between them will be found in the article for Henry Williams. On 17 October 1656, albeit erroneously described as ‘Sir’ Robert Williams, he was certainly the man named to a committee on confiscated crown and church lands, a topic on which he may have laid some claim to knowledge as a relative of the late archbishop.23CJ vii. 440b. He may have gone home by mid-December, since he wrote at that time to his uncle, Richard Griffith of Llanfair, on his efforts to curb the number of excisemen in Caernarfonshire, and soliciting information on how much excise had been paid that year in Griffith’s commote.24Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 107-8. As Glynne was among the most prominent of the ‘kinglings’, it may well have been Robert who was the Williams who voted for Cromwell to take the crown (25 Mar. 1657).25CJ vii. 511a; Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 23 (E.935.5). In the brief sitting of 1658 only one committee claimed the attention of a Williams: the bill to consolidate the parishes of Huntingdon (26 Jan.). As Huntingdonshire was one of the counties where Archbishop Williams had held estates, part of the property squabbled over by Gruffith Williams and Sir Owen Wynn, it seems likely that this was a committee that attracted Robert, rather than Henry.26CJ vii. 588a.

On 16 March 1658, Williams reported to his friend and kinsman, the sheriff of Caernarfonshire, Richard Wynn, on the knighthood bestowed on Colonel John Carter* by Lord Protector Cromwell.27Cal. Wynn Pprs. 349. Two months later, his own father was honoured with a baronetcy, doubtless at the suggestion of John Glynne. Contemporaries noted Robert Williams as a relative of the lord protector, and kinship had been claimed with Cromwell by Archbishop Williams. Cromwell himself seems to have accepted the claim, but in a semi-serious way. Unsurprisingly, the devoutly Anglican biographer of the archbishop, John Hacket, chose not to mention any possible kinship tie, and any familial link there was cannot be shown to have benefited Robert Williams, who seems to have been happy to confine himself to social life in north Wales.28Narrative of the Late Parliament, 17; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 349, 350.

Williams was returned to the 1659 Parliament under the traditional electoral arrangements. His father seems to have had a harder time to get him elected on this occasion, with reports of drawn swords in Caernarfon around the town hall on election night. Williams wrote home to Richard Wynn with parliamentary news (22 Feb.), and on 4 March was called to a committee on a brawl involving William Packer*; he sat alongside his kinsman, Griffith Bordurda.29CJ vii. 610a. Otherwise he made no impact on this assembly.30Cal. Wynn Pprs. 351. He was certainly not considered a diehard Cromwellian by the council of state of the restored Rump Parliament, since he was given a militia captaincy in July 1659, to meet the emergency associated with the rising of Sir George Boothe*: he may well have commanded the militia of his county during the protectorate.31Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 109. In 1660, Williams put up no show of resistance to the restored monarchy. His father headed the list of Caernarfonshire gentry willing to foot the bill for the demolition of Caernarfon Castle and town walls if called upon to do so, although Robert Williams made an affidavit to the effect that he would contribute in the event of the whole county being found liable for the cost.32Bangor Univ. Archives, Baron Hill 3191. He put his name to the petition from north Wales which in June 1660 called for justice to be visited on the regicides.33Mercurius Publicus 24 (7-14 June 1660), 371 (E.186.3).

Gruffith Williams found his baronetcy to be invalid at the Restoration, but on 17 June 1661 it was bestowed again, and once more it was probably Glynne’s influence that secured the honour.34CB iii. 212. Robert Williams seems to have experienced a rather more difficult period of transition from parliamentary to monarchical rule. In February 1661, he was required to account personally for 55 cases of pistols and arms, which his enemy Thomas Madrin had advised the deputy lieutenants of Caernarfonshire were in Williams’ keeping. He was unable to meet their peremptory demand, but sent along Edmund Glynne, one of his father-in-law’s family, to provide the necessary assurances and convince them that ‘cousin’ Madrin had made a mistake.35Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 154, 155. Williams went through a similar ritual exactly a year later, when the deputy lieutenants brusquely demanded some arms, telling Williams they had not reported his neglect to the lord president of the council in Wales, Richard Vaughan†, 2nd earl of Carbery [I], while in fact doing just that.36Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 167. Only after 1665, by which time he had inherited the baronetcy, did he himself become a deputy lieutenant, and the only further honour to come his way, if the onerous position can be called that, was the shrievalty. After the death of his first wife, Williams married again, in 1671. He drew up his will in September 1676, but lived until December 1680. His sons, baronets in turn, died young, to be succeeded in the title by his brother Hugh, of Marl, near Conwy; of his heiresses Anne had a daughter whose husband, Richard Pennant†, was created Baron Penrhyn [I] in 1783.37CB iii. 213.