through whose influence he was admitted as a town-boy to Westminster school, then under Dr. Busby. Busby recommended him to Gerard Langbaine the elder [q. v.] as a deserving northern youth, and in September 1650 he entered as a bateller of Queen's College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. on 2 Feb. 1653–4. His college tutors were Dr. Lamplugh and Dr. Thomas Smith. After graduating he went into France and the Low Countries as tutor to a young man of quality, possibly one of the sons of the Marquis of Ormonde (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. p. 546; cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1651–2, p. 300). In November 1657 he was elected a fellow of Queen's (graduating M.A. in the same month), and he held his fellowship until his marriage. Soon after the Restoration he quitted Oxford for political life upon obtaining a place in the office of Sir Edward Nicholas [q. v.], an old Queen's man, at that time secretary of state. In July 1660 Charles II sent to the provost and fellows of Queen's a special request that they would grant Williamson a dispensation for absence from college; his loss was regretted both by the parents of his pupils and by his colleagues. Henry Denton, the successor to his rooms in college, alluded to his musical tastes when he wrote in October 1660 ‘Your couple of viols still hang in their places as a monument that a genuine son of Jubal has been here.’
His position in the secretary's office was not at first lucrative; but his status was improved on 30 Dec. 1661 by his appointment as keeper of the king's library at Whitehall and at the paper office at a salary of 160l. per annum. The paper office work was performed by four or five clerks under Henry Ball, Williamson's subordinate. They issued news-letters once a week to numerous subscribers and to a smaller number of correspondents, the correspondents in turn furnishing materials which were subsequently embodied in the ‘Gazette’ (see below; cf. Ball's curious report of 23 Oct. 1674 appended to Christie's Williamson Correspondence and Mrs. Everett Green's preface to Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1665–6).
Meanwhile in October 1662 Nicholas was succeeded as secretary by Sir Henry Bennett (afterwards Lord Arlington), and Williamson was transferred to him as secretary. Facilities for making money now became abundant, and he showed himself no backward pupil in the generally practised art of exacting gratifications from all kinds of suitors and petitioners. Pepys met him at dinner on 6 Feb. 1663, and describes him: ‘Latin Secretary … a pretty knowing man and a scholar, but it may be he thinks himself to be too much so.’ On the 28th of the following month he became one of the five commissioners for seizing prohibited goods, and in November 1664 he was one of the five contractors for the Royal Oak lottery, which became a source of considerable profit to him (the right of conducting and managing lotteries was restricted exclusively to the five ‘commissioners’ in June 1665). In this same year (1664) Williamson seems to have been called to the bar from the Middle Temple.
When, in the autumn of 1665, Charles II sought refuge in Oxford from the great plague, the lack of a regular news-sheet was strongly felt by the court. The ravages of the pestilence seem to have disorganised L'Estrange's ‘Intelligencer’ and ‘News.’ Under these circumstances Leonard Lichfield [q. v.], the university printer, was authorised to bring out a local paper. On Tuesday 14 Nov. the first number of the ‘Oxford Gazette’ appeared, and was thenceforth continued regularly on Mondays and Thursdays. The Oxford pioneer of the paper was Henry Muddiman; but, after a few numbers, Williamson procured for himself the privileges of editor, employing Charles Perrot of Oriel College as his chief assistant. When the court was back at Whitehall, Muddiman made vain endeavours to injure Williamson's efforts as a disseminator of news, and L'Estrange put forth a claim, which was rejected, to a monopoly in publishing official intelligence. Williamson's paper became the ‘London Gazette,’ the first issue so named being that of 5 Feb. 1666 (No. 24); it soon outdistanced its rivals, and survives to this day as the official register of the transactions of the government.
As secretary to Arlington, who was at the head of the post office, Williamson took an active part in its management. The amount of official work of all kinds that he got through during the next fifteen years from 1665 to 1680 is enormous, and his correspondence at the Record Office is extraordinarily voluminous. Evelyn wrote that Arlington, ‘loving his ease more than businesse (tho' sufficiently able had he applied himselfe to it), remitted all to his man Williamson, and in a short time let him go into the secret of affaires, that (as his lordship himself told me) there was a kind of necessity to advance him, and so by his subtlety, dexterity, and insinuation he got to be principal Secretary …’ Williamson found some compensation for his labours in the opportunities afforded him of rapidly making money. Two instances of his generosity are afforded
