speaks elsewhere with compassion of Sir Leoline Jenkins lying under the lash of Secretary Williamson, who, upon old grudges between them at Cologne, never failed to lay hold of any occasion he could to censure his conduct, nor did Temple himself altogether succeed in escaping the lash.
During 1675, at the instigation of Charles II, Williamson tried to induce the master of the rolls to remove Burnet from his place as preacher to the master of the rolls, but he encountered a determined opposition from Sir Harbottle Grimston [q. v.], and the outspoken Burnet was enabled to retain his foothold in London. In 1676 Milton's friend, Daniel Skinner, wished to print the deceased poet's ‘Latin State Letters’ and treatise ‘De Doctrina Christiana,’ and applied to Williamson for the necessary license (that of the official licenser being apparently insufficient). The secretary refused, saying that he could countenance nothing of Milton's writing, and he went so far as to write of Skinner (to a likely patron) as a suspect ‘until he very well cured himself from such infectious commerce as Milton's friendship.’ Williamson managed eventually to lay his hands upon the original manuscripts, and locked them up for security among the state archives. The ‘State Letters’ were surreptitiously printed from a transcript in 1676, but the treatise was not published until 1823 (see Lemon, Robert; for the full complicated story of the manuscripts, see Masson, Milton, iv. 158, vi. 331, 603, 616, 721, 729, 774, 805).
Dry and formal though Williamson may have been in his usual manner, it seems fair to infer that he was by no means deficient as a courtier, and his letters to several of the royal concubines show that he did not share Clarendon's scruples about paying court to the ladies whom the king delighted to honour. Upon the whole, however, he confined himself very closely to his official and administrative business and to the direction of foreign affairs. His fellow secretary, Sir Henry Coventry, undertook the parliamentary work. He had to take a decided line upon the subject of the Duke of York's exclusion, and on 4 Nov. 1678, in answer to Lord Russell's motion to remove the Duke of York from the king's presence and councils, in a succinct and not ineffective speech he declared that this would drive the heir to the throne to join the French and the catholics. Almost immediately after this he fell a victim to the panic excited by the supposed discovery of a ‘popish plot,’ and on 18 Nov. he was committed to the Tower by the lower house on the charge of ‘subsigning commissions for officers and money for papists,’ in other words of passing commissions drawn up by the king's order in favour of certain recusants. He remained in the Tower but a few hours, for Charles with unusual energy and decision lost no time in apprising the commons that he had ordered his secretary's release. At the same time the offensive commissions were recalled. Williamson's continuance in office, however, was not considered altogether desirable (cf. Wood, Life and Times, ii. 438). The newsletters on 10 Feb. announced ‘Sir Joseph Williamson is turned out, but is to be repaid what his secretaryship cost him.’ As a matter of fact he received from his successor, Sunderland, 6,000l. and five hundred guineas.
In 1676 Williamson was elected master of the Clothworkers' Company (presenting a silver-gilt cup bearing his arms); he was succeeded as master by Samuel Pepys.
Williamson had been declared a member of the Royal Society by nomination of the original council on 20 May 1663, and on the resignation of Lord Brouncker on 30 Nov. 1677 he was elected second president of the society, a post which he held until 30 Nov. 1680, when he was succeeded by Sir Christopher Wren. The secretaries under him were Thomas Henshaw and Nehemiah Grew. On 4 Dec. 1677, being ‘the first day of his taking the chair, he gave a magnificent supper’ at which Evelyn was present. Immersed in multifarious business though he was at the time, Williamson presided at every meeting of the council during his term of office, and generally managed in addition to preside at the ordinary meetings. He presented several curiosities to the museum, and a large screw press for stamping diplomas, as well as his portrait by Kneller, now in the Society's meeting-room. Oldenburgh dedicated to him the ninth volume of the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’
Though he evidently took much interest in the society's work, researches of a legal, historical, and genealogical nature seem to have been more really congenial to him. He collected many valuable manuscripts relating to heraldry and history, and he purchased the rich collections of Sir Thomas Shirley, which contained visitations of many counties of England written by the heralds or their clerks during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Shortly before his removal from office in December 1678, Sir Joseph married Catharine, eldest and only surviving daughter of George Stuart, lord D'Aubigny (fourth, but second surviving son of Esmè, third duke of
