Griffith Williams (bishop)

Four years later, however, finding his position intolerable, after a visit to Cambridge he returned to London, and in 1625 became domestic chaplain to Philip Herbert, 1st earl of Montgomery (afterwards 4th Earl of Pembroke), and tutor to his children. In 1626 he was presented to the rectory of Trefdraeth in Anglesey. On 17 July 1628 he was installed prebendary of the eighth stall at Westminster,[1] and on 28 March 1634 he was instituted dean of Bangor. About 1636 he was appointed a royal chaplain. He was on the point of being nominated tutor to Prince Charles and the Duke of Gloucester, but at the last moment William Laud, who disliked him in spite of their theological sympathies, obtained the appointment of Brian Duppa instead. Williams also states that "before he was forty years old, he narrowly escaped being elected bishop of St. Asaph," probably on the death of John Hanmer, but on that occasion also saw another preferred to him at the instance of Laud.

In 1641 he was raised to the Irish see of Ossory by a patent dated 11 September. He had resigned his prebend a few months before, but retained his deanery in commendam till his death. On 26 September he was consecrated, but in less than a month he was forced to fly to England by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion of 1641. He came to Apethorpe in Northamptonshire, where he possessed a house, and where he had settled his wife and children. On the night of his arrival he was arrested by a troop of cavalry, under Captain Flaxon, and carried before the parliamentary commissioners at Northampton.

His position was perilous, for he had with him the manuscript of his Vindiciæ Regum, with the words "The Grand Rebellion" written largely on the cover. The sheets were actually in the hands of Sir John North, one of the commissioners, but Williams contrived to get it from him before he had looked at the title, and afterwards, by representing himself as a victim of the Irish rebels, he procured a safe-conduct and the restitution of his belongings. He immediately rejoined the king, and attended him, as chaplain, at the battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642.

Early in 1643 he published his Vindiciæ Regum, or the Grand Rebellion; that is a Looking-glass for Rebels, whereby they may see, how by Ten Several Degrees they shall ascend to the Heighth [sic] of their Design (Oxford, 4to). This vigorous invective against the parliamentarians attained considerable fame, and was publicly burnt by order of parliament. It immediately drew a reply from John Goodwin, entitled Os Ossorianum, or a Bone for a Bishop to pick, which also appeared in an abridged form, as Os, Ossis, and Oris, within the same year.

In the meantime, after spending most of the winter of 1642–3 at Oxford, Williams retired to Wales to compose a second onslaught on the parliamentarians, The 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 (Oxford, 1643, 4to; 1645, 4to). Falkland, misliking some of its sentiments, desired to suppress it, but he was over-ruled by the king. Its publication earned Williams fresh notoriety and substantial punishment. On 8 March 1643/44, while he was preaching at the university church before the royalist parliament, his house at Apethorpe was plundered by the parliamentary troops, his wife and children driven forth, and his possessions sequestered. His sufferings increased his zeal, and in the following winter appeared Jura Majestatis; the Rights of Kings both in Church and State, granted first by God, secondly, violated by Rebels, and, thirdly, vindicated by the Truth; and the Wickedness of the Faction of this pretended Parliament at Westminster (Oxford, 1644, 4to).

In 1643, shortly before his last work was published, he was employed by the king to try to bring over his patron, the Earl of Pembroke. Repairing to London he found the earl in bed, and so incensed him by his exhortations that he was forced to retire hastily in great dread that the earl would deliver him into the hands of parliament.

On trying to quit the city he was stopped and brought before the lord mayor, to whom he said that "he was a poor pillaged preacher from Ireland, who came to London to see his friends," and now desired to go to some friends in Northampton. By this means he obtained a pass to Northampton and reached Oxford, whence, shortly after, he passed into Wales, and thence to Ireland. During these years he contributed to the royal cause as freely from his purse as with his pen, giving the king the greater part of his private revenue.

In 1645 he visited England and had an interview with the king, and on his return found himself in Anglesey when it submitted to General Thomas Mytton. After in vain exhorting the royalists to resist, he managed by a succession of adroit stratagems to reach Ireland, and on 1 April 1647 was presented to the rectory of Rathfarnham, near Dublin. He resided in that city until its surrender in the same year, when he was included by name in the benefits of the capitulation. Ormonde sent him a sum of money to relieve his necessities, but on his way to Wales, to live on a small patrimony he possessed there, he was taken prisoner by Captain Beeche, who robbed him of all he had and left him to make his way back to Dublin in a destitute condition. Dr. Loftus furnished him with money to carry him to London, and he appealed to the committee of sequestrations for the benefits of the Dublin capitulation. On learning that he was the author of Vindiciæ Regum, the committee told him he deserved to have his head cut off, and passed on to the next business without giving him any redress. Armed with a letter from Fairfax, he had better fortune with the committees at Northampton and Anglesey, to which he was driven by poverty to resort on foot. After regaining his small possessions, he lived at his house in Llanllechid in great poverty, preparing his Great Antichrist for press. His old patron, Pembroke, offered him a valuable living in Lancashire if he would submit to parliament; but this he refused, as well as an offer of Henry Cromwell's of £100 a year on the same terms. In 1651, when Charles was marching on Worcester, he preached before the judges at Conway, and manifested such strong royalist tendencies that he saved himself only by flight.

He made various attempts to get his Great Antichrist printed, but could find no one bold enough to venture on it. In 1660, while crossing to Ireland, he heard at Holyhead the news of the Restoration, and the next morning, preaching in Dublin at St. Bride's, was the first in Ireland to pray publicly for the king. He further celebrated the event by the publication of his 'O' Αντιχριστός, the Great Antichrist revealed (London, 1660, fol.), in which he triumphantly showed antichrist to be "neither pope nor Turk," but the Westminster Assembly, whom he characterised in the title as a "collected pack or multitude of hypocritical, heretical, blasphemous, and most scandalous wicked men, that have fulfilled all the prophesies of the Scripture, which have forespoken of the coming of the great Antichrist."

On repairing to his diocese he found his palace and cathedral in ruins, and was immediately involved in numerous lawsuits in his endeavours to recover the alienated lands of the see, in which he was generally unsuccessful. In 1664 he published The Persecution and Oppression of John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, and of Griffith Williams, that was called to the same Bishopric (London, 4to), an animated autobiography, to which he appended a description of the distressed condition of the clergy of his diocese. Some statements in the appendix drew down the censure of the upper house of convocation at Dublin, and he was reduced to plead that they had inadvertently slipped in. He spent considerable sums in restoring his cathedral and repairing the damage wrought by the rebels.

For some years he held the prebendary of Mayne in his diocese in commendam, exchanging it on 21 Feb 1671-2 for the precentorship, which, however, he resigned on 14 March. Rumours of his death were rife in 1671,[2] but he died on 29 March 1672, and was buried in his cathedral at Kilkenny. He left property to endow almshouses for eight poor widows to be erected in the churchyard of the cathedral,[3] and also bequeathed his lands in Llanllechid for the benefit of the poor.[4] Both his successors had some degree of connection with the Bangor area of Wales.

By his wife Anne he left children. He was not always on good terms with her, and in October 1635 she brought a suit for alimony against him in the court of high commission, but the case terminated in a reconciliation.[5]