and for a normal school at Tahiti for training native schoolmasters, and laid before the British and Foreign Bible Society his manuscript of the Raratongan New Testament. In April 1837 he published ‘A Narrative of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands, with Remarks on the Natural History of the Islands, Origin, Languages, Traditions, and Usages of the Inhabitants,’ a volume which excited the interest of men of letters and of science, as well as of those concerned in the progress of Christianity. Several editions have since been published, the latest appearing at Philadelphia in 1889. The common council of London, impressed with the commercial importance of his projects, voted him 500l., and altogether 4,000l. was subscribed, with which the Camden was purchased and fitted out. On 11 April she sailed from Gravesend, containing Williams, his wife, and sixteen other missionaries. After visiting the Samoan Islands he proceeded to Tahiti and other islands of the Society Group, whence he went to the New Hebrides, a group of islands beyond his previous field of labour. Landing at Dillon's Bay, Erromanga, on 20 Nov. 1839, he was killed and eaten by the natives in retaliation, it is believed, for the cruelties previously perpetrated by an English crew. As the news of Williams's death was carried by the Camden from island to island, the population burst into wailing and abandoned themselves to hopeless grief, even the heathen joining in the lamentation.
Williams was the most successful missionary of modern times. He acquired the languages and adapted himself to the varying characters of the races he encountered in a manner most remarkable for a man of his defective education. He supplied his lack of training by great practical sagacity and by marvellous comprehension and toleration of alien modes of thought, but, above all, by singlehearted zeal for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the native races, which they did not fail to perceive and appreciate. A stone marks the place at Apia where his remains, collected by Captain Croker of her majesty's ship Favourite, were buried. On 29 Oct. 1816 Williams married Mary Chauner, who shared in his labours until his death. By her he had a surviving son, William.
[Williams's Missionary Enterprise, Philadelphia, 1889; Prout's Memoirs of John Williams, 1843; Campbell's Martyr of Erromanga, 1842; Lovett's Hist. of the London Missionary Soc., 1899, vol. i. index; English Cyclopædia; Horne's Story of the London Missionary Soc. 1894; Buzacott's Mission Life in the Islands of the Pacific, 1866.]
WILLIAMS, JOHN (1753–1841), banker and mine-adventurer, born at Lower Cusgarne in Cornwall on 23 Sept. 1753, was the eldest son of Michael Williams (d. 1775), mine-adventurer, by his wife Susanna; she was granddaughter of John Harris of Higher Cusgarne, who married Elizabeth, only daughter of John Beauchamp of Trevince, head of an ancient Cornish family. The father, Michael, was the son of John Williams (d. 1761), who came to Burncoose in Cornwall from Wales to seek his fortune in mining. He left a sum of 10,000l., of which the greater part was bequeathed to Michael.
The son John was educated at the old grammar school of Truro, and on his father's death in 1775 he inherited little more than 1,000l., the rest of his father's property passing to the younger children. He at once embarked in mining, and in March 1775 was appointed purser, manager, and bookkeeper of a mine called Wheal Maiden. His interest in mining rapidly extended, and in 1783 the duties of superintending a large number of mines induced him to remove from Burncoose, where he lived at first, to the village of Scorrier, at the other end of the parish of Gwennap, where he built Scorrier House. Among other undertakings towards the close of the century, he leased and worked some valuable sulphur mines in the county of Wicklow, and also engaged in business as a metal smelter. He became the greatest living authority on matters connected with mining, and strangers visiting Cornwall and anxious to see the mines were usually furnished with letters of introduction to him. Between 1795 and 1800 he received a visit from the Bourbon princes (afterwards Louis XVIII and Charles X). In 1806, having purchased the manor of Calstock in East Cornwall, he developed the manganese industry of that neighbourhood. In 1810 he became partner in the Cornish bank at Truro, and in 1812 he contracted with government, in conjunction with the Messrs. Fox of Falmouth, to build the breakwater at Plymouth, employing John Rennie [q. v.] in its construction. In this work his local knowledge, aided by prolonged observations of the tides and currents, was of great value. In 1828 he retired from business, and resided for the rest of his life at Sandhill, a house on his estate at Calstock.
One of the most remarkable occurrences in Williams's life was his dream of the assassination of Perceval. On 2 or 3 May 1812, eight or nine days before the catastrophe, he dreamt three times in the same night that he saw a man shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, a place with
