reprint his works ‘all such as are not controversial,’ at stated intervals for two thousand years. Five of his books were to be translated into Latin, and No. 1 above also into Welsh. There is a collection of his ‘Practical Discourses,’ 1738–50, 5 vols. 8vo. The ‘Gospel Truth’ was translated into Latin by Q. A., and published as ‘Veritas Evangelica,’ 1740, 8vo; reissued with five other pieces by Williams, translated by James Belsham (d. 1770) in ‘Tractatus Selecti,’ 1760, 8vo.
By both his marriages Williams acquired considerable properties, and while in Ireland he had been the recipient of handsome legacies. On himself he spent comparatively little, and having no children he devoted the bulk of his estate (estimated at 50,000l.) to charitable uses. His will (dated 26 June 1711; codicil, 22 Aug. 1712), besides provision for his widow, numerous legacies, bequests for the poor in various places, endowments for presbyterian chapels at Wrexham and Burnham, Essex, for St. Thomas's Hospital, for the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and for mission societies in Scotland and New England, goes on to nominate as trustees thirteen presbyterian ministers (of whom seven took the conservative side in the non-subscription controversy of 1719) and ten laymen. The trusts were chiefly for scholastic and religious purposes (including an itinerant preacher in the Irish language) and for a library. After two thousand years (or earlier in the event of the suppression of protestant worship) the income of the property is to revert to the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow to support almshouses. Interlineations in the will and the fact that the codicil was not attested led to complicated contentions with the heir-at-law, Williams's sister, Mrs. Roberts. A chancery suit was begun by the trustees in 1717, and others followed. Mrs. Roberts at length accepted, in satisfaction of her claims, an annuity of 60l. (a permanent charge on the trust), and on 26 July 1721 a decree of the rolls court established the will. The trust was administered under the directions of the court of chancery for about 140 years. It has since been modified by the endowed schools commissioners and the charity commissioners. Bursaries at Carmarthen College, valuable scholarships tenable at Glasgow, and divinity scholarships tenable in any approved theological college, are, within certain limits, regulated by the trustees.
In addition to his own library Williams had purchased (for over 500l.) that of William Bates, D.D. He directed the purchase or erection of a ‘fit edifice,’ and a payment of 10l. a year to a librarian. Defoe hoped it might become ‘the compleatest library in Britain.’ To Calamy is due the establishment of the library on a more important scale than Williams had in view. In September 1727 a site was purchased in Red Cross Street. The building was completed by subscription, the sum sanctioned by chancery being insufficient. On 8 Dec. 1729 the trustees first met in the library; a librarian was appointed on 20 April 1730. Till the secession of unitarians in 1836 from the ‘three denominations’ [see Yates, James] the Red Cross Street Library (see engraving of its front in Protestant Dissenter's Magazine, 1794, p. 416) was the headquarters of London dissent. Here were kept the London dissenting registers of birth and baptism (now at Somerset House). Among many important additions to the library were the bequest of nearly two thousand volumes by William Harris (1675?–1740 [q. v.], the gift of 2,400 volumes from the collection of George Henry Lewes [q. v.], and the deposit of a theosophic collection (a thousand volumes) by Christopher Walton [q. v.] In 1864 the library (then containing twenty thousand books and five hundred volumes of manuscripts) was removed to temporary premises in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. It was transferred in 1873 to a new building in Grafton Street, W.C., and in 1890 to University Hall, Gordon Square, W.C. Among its treasures (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App.; Athenæum, 26 Dec. 1874) are the original minutes of the Westminster Assembly, a fine first folio Shakespeare (Notes and Queries, 7 Dec. 1872, p. 447), and a cast of the face of Oliver Cromwell, taken after death.
