ROWLAND

See also:

• WILLIAMS
• WILLIAMS, JOHN (1582-1650)
• WILLIAMS, JOHN (1796-1839)
• WILLIAMS, ROGER (c. 1604–1684)
• ROWLAND WILLIAMS (1817-1870)
• WILLIAMS, SIR WILLIAM FENWICK

WILLIAMS (1817-1870)  , English divine and scholar, was born at Halkyn, Flint, the son of Rowland Williams (d . 1854), canon of St Asaph, and educated at Eton and Cam-bridge . He was elected fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1839, and took orders in 1842 . During the next few years he actively opposed the amalgamation of the sees of St Asaph and Bangor . In 1850 he became vice-principal and Hebrew lecturer at St David's College, Lampeter, where he introduced much-needed educational and financial reforms . He was appointed select preacher of Cambridge University in 1854, and preached a sermon on inspiration, afterwards published in his Rational Godliness after the Mind of Christ and the Written Voices of the Church (London, 1855) . He was charged with heterodoxy, and Alfred 011ivant (1798-1882), bishop of Llandaff, required him to resign his chaplaincy, but he remained at the college in spiteof these difficulties . His views were further defined in Christianity and Hinduism (Cambridge, 1856), an expansion of the Muir prize essay which he had won in 1848 . He became vicar in 1858 of Broadchalke with Bowerchalke and Alvedistone, Wiltshire . As a result of his favourable review of Bunsen's " Biblical Re-searches " contributed to Essays and Reviews (186o) he was prosecuted for heterodoxy . An unfavourable judgment was given by the Canterbury Court of Arches in 1862, but reversed by the Privy Council in 1864 . Williams died on the 18th of January 187o .

Besides the above

works his most important production was a translation of the Hebrew Prophets with commentary (pt. i . 1866; pt. ii. edited by Mrs Williams 1871; pt. iii. though planned was never written) . See Life and Letters, edited by Mrs Williams (2 vols., 1874) ; and T . K . Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893) .