was published. To this volume Williams contributed a review of Bunsen's ‘Biblical Researches,’ with the object of giving the latest results of Biblical criticism. The freedom with which theological questions were treated in this volume alarmed the adherents of plenary and verbal inspiration, and a panic ensued. Williams was prosecuted by Walter Kerr Hamilton [q. v.], bishop of Salisbury, for heterodoxy, and cited before the arches court of Canterbury, where he was defended by (Sir) James Parker Deane and (Sir) James Fitzjames Stephen [q. v.] The hearing occupied ten days—19 to 21 Dec. 1861 and 7 to 16 Jan. 1862. Judgment was deferred till 25 June 1862, when, out of twenty-two articles of indictment, three were admitted—those on inspiration, propitiation, and justification; the first two were ordered to be reformed. Though in the main adverse, this interlocutory judgment practically sanctioned nearly all the positions of biblical criticism and of the relations of scripture to science which Williams had maintained to be consistent with the standards of the Anglican church. He wrote: ‘Whatever freedom I have claimed is judicially conceded as permissible by the Church of England. If we gain nothing more, I feel this day that I have not lived in vain; my Master has done a work by me which will abide.’ But there were details—including, chiefly, a description of Bunsen's Lutheran and philosophical doctrines—for which he was held legally responsible. The admitted articles were brought in on 12 Sept. 1862, but the hearing was deferred till 15 Dec. 1862, when the judge, Stephen Lushington [q. v.], adhered to his judgment of June, and the sentence of suspension for one year, with costs, was passed. An appeal was at once made to the privy council. Meanwhile the charge respecting propitiation had been withdrawn and the appeal reduced to two counts. Williams, together with his friend Henry Bristow Wilson [q. v.], appealed in person on 19 June 1863 before the judicial committee of the privy council. The hearing lasted till 26 June, and on 8 Feb. 1864 the court reversed such parts of the judgment of the arches court as were unfavourable to Williams. During the trial Williams had printed ‘Hints to my Counsel in the Court of Arches,’ in which he set forth the line he wished to be adopted for his defence. This was at first supplied to his counsel alone, but on his deathbed he directed that copies should be sent to libraries in England and Wales.
The reversal of the judgment excited fresh agitation, and the ‘Oxford Declaration’ on the verbal inspiration of the Bible and eternal punishment prepared by Pusey was signed by four thousand of the clergy. Convocation proceeding to condemn ‘Essays and Reviews,’ Williams presented a petition, through Canon Wordsworth, praying to be heard before he was condemned. The petition was entered on the minutes, but refused, and a synodical condemnation carried. A debate followed in the House of Lords, when Lord Houghton (Richard Monckton Milnes) questioned the right of convocation to condemn books at all, and the lord chancellor (Westbury) declared that, as a judgment, the sentence had no meaning, and that the so-called synodical condemnation was no condemnation at all (Life and Letters, ii. 153–65).
At Broad Chalke Williams wrote ‘Broad Chalke Sermon-Essays,’ London, 1867. These were essays expanded from preaching notes of a simple kind. He was also engaged upon a translation of the ‘Hebrew Prophets, with introduction and notes, 2 vols. Part i. was published 1866, and part ii. was brought out after his death, 1871, edited by his wife, with the help of the Rev. W. W. Harvey. Part iii. was planned but not begun. He felt compelled, though most reluctantly, to give up the predictive element in the prophetical writings, and was convinced that the prophets dealt with events then taking place, and that it was in the applicability to all time of the truths they uttered that their words might be considered prophetic. He claimed for them ‘a moral affinity to the thoughts of the future rather than a foresight of its events, a predication of eternal truths rather than a prediction of temporal accidents’ (Christianity and Hinduism, p. 477). Ewald wrote of Williams's ‘Hebrew Prophets’ as ‘a work quite unparalleled in English literature’ (Gött. gel. Anz. S. 4, 1867). Kuenen, in ‘Theologisch Tijdschrift,’ 1871, and Diestel, in ‘Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie,’ 1872, reviewed it favourably (see also Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism).
Williams died on 18 Jan. 1870. He was buried in the churchyard at Broad Chalke. A cross rising from a block of granite marks his resting-place. In 1859 he married Ellen, daughter of Charles Cotesworth, R.N., a Liverpool merchant.
The fine five-light Perpendicular west window of All Saints, Broad Chalke, was filled with painted glass in his memory at the expense of his parishioners and friends from all parts; it was unveiled in 1873. At Lampeter a bronze tablet with inscrip-
