significant that Duncan Cumyng, M.D., who first discovered the heresy of Thomas Emlyn [q. v.], was his almoner for Ireland. His last publications in this controversy were ‘An Answer to the Report,’ 1698, 8vo, and ‘An End to Discord,’ 1699, 8vo (cf. Nelson, Life of Bull, 1713, p. 259).
In 1700 Williams revisited Ireland. In 1701 he interested himself in the settlement of James Peirce [q. v.] at Cambridge. In March 1702 he headed a joint address from the ‘three denominations’ on the accession of Anne; it was the first occasion on which the three bodies thus acted together (Calamy, Abridgement, 1713, p. 621). Williams opposed the bill against ‘occasional conformity,’ and did his utmost, without avail, to prevent the extension (1704) of the sacramental test to Ireland. Calamy, in 1704, submitted to him the manuscript of the ‘introduction’ to the second part of his ‘Defence of Moderate Nonconformity.’ In this tractate Calamy frankly declared for ‘a meer independent scheme’ of church government; knowing that Williams, almost alone among London ministers, held ‘the divine right of presbytery,’ he begged for his criticisms. Williams replied that the publication was ‘seasonable,’ and therefore he would not answer it, though he could do so ‘with ease.’ The diploma of D.D. (dated 2 May 1709) was sent to Williams from Edinburgh, and in the same month from Glasgow (in a silver box). He had written to William Carstares [q. v.] declining the proposed honour. A proposal for a nonconformist academy at Hoxton was discountenanced by Williams, who was in favour of sending divinity students to Scotland for their education. He was anxious for the establishment of a residential college at Edinburgh, and offered 500l. towards the estimated cost.
Williams had long been intimate with Robert Harley, first earl of Oxford [q. v.], who, soon after his accession to power (1710), offered Williams 1,000l. for distribution among dissenting ministers as royal bounty. He declined the boon (Calamy, Own Life, ii. 471). He distrusted Oxford's loyalty to the Hanover succession. On the accession of George I Williams again headed the ‘three denominations’ with a loyal address to the throne (28 Sept. 1714). This was his last public act. His health till 1709 had been good; he now rapidly declined, leaving most of his work to John Evans (1680?–1730) [q. v.], his assistant from 1704. The sarcastic picture of him by John Fox (1693–1763) [q. v.] as ‘the figure of a man in black sitting alone at a large wainscot table, smoking a pipe … without moving either his head or eyes to see who or what we were … the greatest bundle of pride, affectation, and ill manners I had ever met with’ (Monthly Repository, 1821, p. 194; Devonshire Association Report, 1896, p. 139), refers to a period (1715) when ‘bodily disorders greatly embittered life, and began, in a manner unusual to him, to sequester him’ (Wilson, ii. 207).
Williams died at Hoxton (where he had a house with ‘a large court, in which, when Fox visited him, stood his coach) on 26 Jan. 1715–16. Evans preached his funeral sermon. He was buried in ‘a new vault’ in Bunhill Fields, near the City Road entrance, west side; his tomb, with its long Latin inscription, is kept in good repair by his trustees (for the inscription, see Defoe, p. 85, and Calamy, Continuation, ii. 981). His portrait (in which it is difficult to see the philanthropist) was presented in 1747 to Dr. Williams's Library by the daughters of John Morton (d. 1746), linendraper, an original trustee; an engraving by James Caldwall [q. v.] is in some copies of the first edition of Palmer's ‘Nonconformist's Memorial,’ 1778, ii. 640. He married, first (license dated 16 Oct. 1675), Elizabeth (she signs ‘Eliza’), daughter of Sir Robert Meredith of Green Hills, Kildare, and widow of Thomas Juxon (d. 2 Oct. 1672) of East Sheen, parish of Mortlake, Surrey, whose daughter and heiress, Elizabeth (d. 1722), married, as her second husband, John Wynne (d. 1715); to Mrs. Wynne Williams in his will left a silver basin ‘as having been her father's.’ The first Mrs. Williams died, without issue by Williams, on 10 June 1698, aged 62, through grief at the death of her sister Alice, dowager countess of Mountrath. He married, secondly, in 1701, Jane (d. 1 Jan. 1739–40), elder daughter of George Guill, a Huguenot refugee merchant, and widow of Francis Barkstead (son of John Barkstead [q. v.]), by whom she had a son Francis and daughters Mary and Elizabeth, but none by Williams; her portrait, with several portraits of the Barksteads, was given (1750) to Dr. Williams's Library by Benjamin Sheppard (her grandson). Her sister Susanna was married to Joseph Stennett [q. v.], the seventh-day baptist.
Besides the works noted above, and numerous funeral, thanksgiving, and other sermons, Williams published: 1. ‘The Vanity of Childhood and Youth … Sermons to Young People,’ 1691, 8vo. 2. ‘A Letter to the Author of a Discourse of Free Thinking,’ 1713, 8vo (defends the eternity of hell torments). 3. ‘Some Queries relating to the Bill for preventing the Growth of Schism,’ 1714, 8vo. His will directs his trustees to
