WILLIAMS, Henry (c.1623-75), of Lower Caebalfa, Clyro, Rad.

The founder of the Williams dynasty in Breconshire was Sir David Williams, the grandfather of Henry Williams, this Member. Sir David was attorney-general for south Wales, puisne justice of king’s bench and on the strength of wealth acquired through legal office, proprietor of extensive estates in Breconshire. He sat for Brecon Boroughs in four Elizabethan Parliaments. Sir David acquired the mansion house of Gwernyfed near Hay-on-Wye in 1600. His son, Sir Henry Williams, sat for Brecon Boroughs and Breconshire in four Parliaments of James I, and died in 1636. Sir Henry’s eldest son, Henry Williams, sat for Breconshire in 1628, and a younger son, Robert Williams, was the father of the subject of this article.18HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Henry Williams’, ‘Henry Williams’. The Williams family was thus steeped in the parliamentary politics of Breconshire. Robert Williams was baptized at St Mary-le-Strand, London on 1 Apr. 1586, and settled not in Breconshire but in Radnorshire on his marriage.19Soc. Gen. Williams docs., box 2, pedigree by Wood. Robert Williams stood for Brecon in the second election of 1640, but there was a double return, and on 6 January 1641 the House ruled in favour of his rival, Herbert Price, by allowing Price to sit until the election should be conclusively determined.20Procs. LP ii. 122, 124.

In May 1640, Henry Williams, the 1628 Member, was one of a number of Breconshire deputy lieutenants active in recruiting men for the army against the Scots. He and his colleagues complained to John Egerton†, earl of Bridgewater, president of the council in the marches, of obstructions placed in their way by the bailiff of Brecon, who claimed a rival jurisdiction in the borough.21SP16/453, f. 111. When the civil war broke out in 1642, the senior branch of the Williams family maintained its loyalty to the king: Henry Williams moved naturally from being a deputy lieutenant to being a Breconshire commissioner of array for the royalist cause. He may have been joined in the commission for Radnorshire by Robert, his brother, but there was another of the same name who in 1649 was informed against for his royalism. Henry distinguished himself in the king’s service, and was knighted in 1644. The king himself stayed at Gwernyfed (6 Aug. 1645), only weeks after the battle of Naseby, and despite his prominence, Henry Williams was never sequestered by Parliament.22HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Henry Williams’; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. Any possible practical involvement by Robert in civil war politics and administration was in any case very short-lived, as he made a nuncupative will in December 1642, and probably died very soon afterwards.23CCAM 1023; PROB11/200, f. 318v.

Aged 19 at the outbreak of civil war, Henry Williams of Caebalfa seems to have played no military or civilian part in the conflict. His brother-in-law, Edward Rumsey, was active in politics by March 1646, however, and signed a letter to the Speaker that month from Cardiff, reporting the arrest of a former royalist sheriff of Breconshire, ‘one of the greatest favourites of Raglan’.24Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 539. This allusion to the seat of the Somerset earls of Worcester, the greatest landlords of south-east Wales, whose estates extended to properties in Radnorshire, may suggest that Rumsey and Williams became active politically because of their hostility towards the Raglan interest. Certainly by May 1646, Williams was ‘treasurer-at-large’ in Radnorshire, not only for sequestrations but other revenues arising for the parliamentary cause. The commissioners for accounts, in their efforts in 1647 to audit the accounts of the Radnorshire county committee, noted irregularities in accounting and procedures, not least the fact that Henry Williams admitted to having neglected to take the oath of Parliament prior to becoming county treasurer.25SP28/251, pt. 1. They wrote from Radnorshire to the Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom that Williams, whom they denigrated as ‘reputed treasurer’, had not responded to their summons to attend them.26CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 708. The Presbyterian-dominated accounts committees identified Williams as requiring disciplining at the very least, but this dispute did nothing to impede Williams’s progress through the local offices of his county, and admission to the commission of the peace after 1649, not only Radnorshire but also for neighbouring counties. He was named to the commission for propagating the gospel in Wales, as a colleague of John Williams* from the Radnorshire county committee, but whereas John Williams was an enthusiastic and diligent member of the commission for south Wales, Henry Williams seems not to have acted in it. The Henry Williams who attended some meetings at Wrexham was doubtless the man of the same name, probably from Ysgafell, Newtown, Montgomeryshire, who was made a commissioner with Williams of Caebalfa.27LPL, Comm. VIII/1; T. Richards, Hist. Puritan Movement in Wales (1920), 150, 154.

During the height of the radicals’ influence over Cromwell, and on the eve of the abrupt dismissal of the Rump Parliament, the commissioners for compounding with delinquents re-opened the case against Williams, in pursuit of over £500 of sequestration fines or rents they believed he had detained (14 Apr. 1653).28CCC 636. By January 1654, Williams had become sympathetic towards the Cromwellian protectorate, and hostile towards Vavasor Powell, the most fiery and radical preacher active in mid-Wales. He supplied Powell’s inveterate enemy, the dispossessed Anglican clergyman, Alexander Griffith, with intelligence about the minister’s preaching engagements in Radnorshire. No doubt acting in his capacity as a magistrate, Williams ensured that a protectoral edict on treason was read out in a Radnorshire church.29TSP ii. 44; Oxford DNB, ‘Alexander Griffith’. Williams was surely the man of that name who stood against Edmund Jones* for the single county seat of Breconshire in July 1654. Following that election, complaints came to the protector’s council against Jones and his ally, the sheriff, concerning the conduct of the election. Jones’s supporters were alleged to have been guilty of ‘putting off and thrusting by’ the voters for Williams.30SP18/73, f. 159. In the event, Williams faced no such opposition in Radnorshire, which returned him without incident. At this point in his public life, Williams is best considered as sympathetic towards the protectorate, but outside the Cromwellian circle of Philip Jones*, which included Edmund Jones, the successful candidate for Breconshire.

In the 1654 Parliament, Williams was named to four committees: the committee on revising the protectoral ordinance on ejecting scandalous ministers (25 Sept.), to promote the corn and dairy trade (6 Oct.), on Lord Craven's pension (3 Nov.), and on public accounts, with particular reference to the scandal of forged bills and debentures (22 Nov.).31CJ vii. 370a, 374b, 381a, 388a. Probably tellingly, Williams was not included among the godly lay commissioners for regulating the state religious ministry (the ‘ejectors’), although he was appointed one of the militia commissioners for south Wales following the royalist unrest of early 1655.

On his re-election in 1656, he was joined in the House by another ‘Mr Williams’ (Robert) and as no distinction is made between them in the committee lists for the next two Parliaments except for two cases (17 Oct. 1656, 4 Mar. 1659) where Robert is specified, it can only be stated that this Member was in general the more prominent of the two, and certainly regarded as reliable by the government, since he was appointed one of the commissioners for the security of the protector, who were intended to form a commission of oyer and terminer on relevant matters of policing and intelligence. Given his support for the government, it seems likely that he was the Williams named to the committees of privilege (18 Sept. 1656) and attendance on the protector with a declaration on a fast day (22 Sept.).32CJ vii. 424a, 426b. The remainder of the committee appointments in 1656 to which either he or Robert Williams was called, seven in number, considered the petitions of a range of individuals.33CJ vii. 433a, 452a, 464a, 472a, 473a. Only one, on the case of the Quaker, James Naylor, and his blasphemous entry to Bristol, was of wider political significance (31 Oct.).34CJ vii. 448a. An allegation reached the protector's secretariat that on 26 November 1656 Williams was present at a convivial meeting of Welsh squires at the Horseshoe in Chancery Lane when one of their number who was doubtless in his cups, provoked by the casual intrusion of one of Oliver Cromwell’s* guards, alarmed them exceedingly by an impromptu outburst against Cromwellian tyranny. He and James Philipps*, also present, at once dissociated themselves from the tirade, a further indication that Williams was loyal to the protectorate.35TSP v. 656. On 16 December, on behalf of himself and the parishioners of Clyro he petitioned the council for an increase of their minister Richard Swayne’s living from £70 to £100 a year, and obtained their approval for it a week later.36CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 198. Swayne was a former Approver during the life of the propagation commission, and was a moderate puritan who held his living at Clyro until he was ejected in 1662, despite Williams’s evident support for him during the interregnum.37R.T. Jones, B.G. Owens, ‘Anghydffurfwyr Cymru 1660-1662’, Y Cofiadur xxxii. 81.

Of 13 committees including ‘Mr Williams’ in 1657, the most important concerned the Humble Petition and Advice. One was to redraft a clause for the Remonstrance (5 Mar.), another to ask the lord protector for an interview (7 Apr.), and another to obtain a date from the protector for the presentation of the Petition and Advice (23 May).38CJ vii. 499b, 521a, 538b. Other significant business to claim the attention of Mr Williams was the control of building development in the London suburbs (9 May), on the passage of public bills in general and the bill on the postal service (29 May), and the reporting to the protector on the assessment bill, among others (4 June).39CJ vii. 532a, 542a, 545b. Among the more significant items of business relating to individuals were the review of Irish land grants to Charles Lloyd* (9 May), the claims of Colonel John Carter* (2 June). Committees on the petition of Margaret, countess of Worcester, and the debts of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, to which one of the two men called Williams was called, were parliamentary attempts to settle residual claims after the demise of heads of the great opposing aristocratic families of south Wales.40CJ vii. 504a, 528b, 532a, 543b. Only one committee in the brief sitting of 1658 claimed the attention of a Williams: the bill to consolidate the parishes of Huntingdon (26 Jan.).41CJ vii. 588a. It is not clear which Williams voted on 25 March 1657 for Cromwell to be king, though on balance it seems more likely to have been Robert.42CJ vii. 511a; Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 23 (E.935.5).

A ‘Mr Williams’ acted as teller on 5 May 1657, in a futile bid to prevent a day's adjournment. As the motive of the proponents of adjournment seems to have been to clear away parliamentary business to facilitate an early resolution of the kingship and constitutional questions, this teller may have been less than enthusiastic about the Humble Petition. However, the fellow-teller of the Williams who successfully proposed a delay in the bill for the claims of the Irish Adventurers (11 May), Gilbert Ireland, was a ‘kingling’. On 20 June a Williams paired with William Brisco in a division, successfully to vote down a clause that would have introduced minute detail into the definition of Sabbath observance, and on 25 June one was teller in a fruitless attempt to secure immediate hearing for the Westmorland county petition.43CJ vii. 530b, 532b, 567b, 575a.

Although Williams was re-elected in 1659, he appears to have played no part in that Parliament. Apart from some shrinkage in his local appointments at the restoration of the monarchy, the return of the king marked no deterioration in his fortunes. On the eve of the king’s return the council of state appointed Sir Henry Williams of Gwernyfed, his cousin, colonel of the Breconshire militia, an office which he used to break up a meeting of south Wales dissenters listening to the preaching of Captain Jenkin Jones, a follower of Thomas Harrison I* since the heyday of the English republic.44SP29/8, f. 35. Such prominent royalist activism did Williams of Caebalfa no harm at all, even if Williams of Gwernyfed soon began to sulk about his treatment by the new government.45CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 563. In 1671 Williams acquired his wife’s interest in the Whitney estate (she died soon afterwards), and became a Herefordshire squire. His last known act on the public stage was to preside as sheriff of Herefordshire in the Weobley by-election of April 1675. There he conducted the poll in an irregular fashion, so that the contest had to be fought again after his death.46HP Commons 1660-90,’Weobley’. Henry Williams of Caebalfa drew up his will in December 1675, expressing a wish to be buried in the Middle Temple, should he die in London; or in Whitney, Herefordshire, if elsewhere. He was dead by 1 February 1676, when his will was proved.47PROB11/350, f. 207. His eldest son, Richard, to whom he left all his lands in Breconshire, Radnorshire and Herefordshire, sat for Radnorshire in 1677; but before the century was long out all his sons were dead, leaving among them only one daughter to inherit.48HP Commons 1660-90, HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Richard Williams’.