his well-known work enforcing his favourite doctrine of complete religious toleration, "The bloody tenet of persecution for cause of conscience discussed in a conference between truth and peace." He revisited England in 1651, and secured the confirmation of the former charter. After his return he was elected, in 1654, president of the colony. He died at Providence in 1683. As an assertor of the rights of conscience, Roger Williams is pronounced by Bancroft to have been "the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor."—F. E.
* WILLIAMS, Sir William Fenwick, of Kars, first baronet, K.C.B., Brigadier-general, is the second son of the late Thomas Williams, commissary-general and barrack-master at Halifax in Nova Scotia at Annapolis, in which colony he was born in 1800. Educated at the academy at Woolwich, where he was placed by the late duke of Kent, he entered the artillery in 1825 as second lieutenant, becoming captain in 1840. Early in his military life he was sent to Ceylon, where he was employed in engineering duties for nine years. Selected by the late Lord Vivian when master-general of the ordnance to instruct the Turks in artillery practice, he was appointed in 1843 by Lord Aberdeen one of the commissioners to determine the boundary between Asiatic Turkey and Persia. Four of the years spent in this employment were passed, literally, under canvass. He was a lieutenant-colonel and a C.B., when in 1854 he was appointed her majesty's commissioner with the Turkish army in Asia, and in September of that year he reached Kars. The story of his gallant defence of Kars belongs to the history of the war with Russia. After Kars capitulated, he was sent in honourable captivity to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and was released at the peace. On the 9th of May, 1856, Lord Granville in the house of peers moved the message to her majesty recommending the bestowal of an annuity of £1000 on the hero of Kars, and gave a laudatory sketch of his career. The annuity was granted; he was made a baronet with the style of Sir William Williams of Kars, and appointed commandant at Woolwich. In July, 1856, he entered the house of commons as member for Calne, but he resigned his seat in 1859, on his appointment to the command of the troops in Canada.—F. E.
WILLIAMSON, Sir Joseph, some time principal secretary of state in the reign of Charles II., was born probably about 1630. He began life as clerk to a member of parliament; and, zealous for self-improvement, was admitted to Westminster school, whence he proceeded to Queen's college, Oxford, of which he afterwards became a fellow. After the Restoration he became clerk of the state-paper office at Whitehall, and by his talents and dexterity steadily rose until he succeeded Arlington as principal secretary of state in 1674. But for the support of Charles he would have been one of the earliest victims of the Popish plot. He resigned his secretaryship in 1678, and died in 1701. He is chiefly remembered for his benefactions to Queen's college, Oxford, and for his endowment of a mathematical school at Rochester, which city he had represented in parliament.—F. E.
WILLIAMSON, Peter, an ingenious and enterprising Scotchman, whose adventurous history is stranger than fiction, was born of respectable parents in the parish of Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, about the year 1730. At this time an infamous trade was carried on at Aberdeen, of kidnapping young persons to be sold into a species of slavery in America; and Peter having been sent by his parents on a visit to that city, was inveigled, along with a considerable number of other children, on board a ship lying in the harbour, and carried off to America. The vessel was shipwrecked on her voyage off Cape May, near the capes of the Delaware, but the crew and passengers were saved. On reaching Philadelphia, Peter was sold for seven years, fortunately to a kind master, who at his death, which took place when his apprentice was seventeen, bequeathed him his liberty and a legacy of £200. At the age of twenty-four Peter married the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and settled on a farm in Pecks county, near the forks of the Delaware. But unhappily, in the autumn of 1754, during the absence of his wife, his house was attacked by a party of Indians, who plundered and destroyed his whole property, and carried himself away a prisoner. He spent some months with his captors, acting as their servant, but at length made his escape; and after enduring dreadful hardships, and escaping great dangers, he reached the house of his father-in-law, to find that his wife had died of grief in a week after her return home. Williamson new enlisted as a soldier, and took part in the struggle between the English and French for the possession of Canada. In August, 1756, he was taken prisoner by the enemy, but was shortly after released on the surrender of Montreal, and returned to England in November of that year. In June, 1758, he visited Aberdeen, where, as he had previously done in other towns, he exhibited himself in the arms and dress of a North American Indian, and sold a small pamphlet containing a narrative of his life and adventures. But the magistrates of Aberdeen, feeling the infamy of the exposure of the kidnapping system, and no doubt stimulated by their clerk-depute and other persons who had been concerned in the vile traffic, dragged Peter before their tribunal, caused his pamphlet to be burned by the common hangman, and fined and banished him the city. The victim of these monstrous proceedings, however, found sympathizing friends in Edinburgh, and with their help he brought an action against his municipal oppressors before the court of session, and obtained, in January, 1762, a decision awarding him damages to the amount of £100, together with the expense of the litigation. He next brought an action against the villains by whom he had been abducted, and ultimately, in December, 1768, obtained against them an award of £200, in addition to the costs of the suit. Peter passed the remainder of his strange life in great comfort. He set up a tavern in Edinburgh, which became famous as the resort of lawyers and litigants. In 1782 he established a Directory, the first publication of the kind which appeared in Edinburgh. He projected a number of ingenious schemes, the most important of which was that of a penny post for the city and suburbs. He conducted this institution with great success, and when it was taken under the charge of the government a pension was bestowed upon the founder. Williamson died 19th January, 1799, leaving behind him the character of an enterprising and upright though somewhat eccentric man.—J. T.
WILLIS, Browne, an eminent English antiquary, was born at Blandford, Dorsetshire, September 14, 1682, and was grandson of Dr. Thomas Willis, F.R.S. Browne Willis was educated at Oxford. He was returned to parliament for Buckingham in 1705, but made no prominent figure there, and did not hold his seat long. In 1741 he presented the university of Oxford with his fine collection of English coins, and gave some MSS. to the Bodleian library. In 1749 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. He took particular interest in the restoration of ancient ecclesiastical edifices, and bestowed many valuable benefactions for this purpose, and he was also noted for his charities to the poor. He was the author of "Notitia Parliamentaria," 1730-33; and "An Abridgment of the whole Duty of Man." He published in 1715 "A Survey of St. David's Cathedral," &c., written, it is said, by Wotton; as also subsequently "A Survey of nearly all the Cathedrals of England and Wales." His "Table of the Gold Coins of the Kings of England" appeared in 1733 in the "Vetusta Monumenta," and his "History of Buckingham" in 1755. Some of his collections are among Cole's MSS. in the British museum.—F.
WILLIS, Francis, a physician celebrated for the treatment of insanity, was educated at Brazennose college, Oxford. He took the degree of M.A., and entered the church in 1740. Soon after he obtained the living of St. John's, Wapping, and subsequently that of Greatford in Lincolnshire. Having a taste for medicine he made it a study, and began to prescribe for his parishioners. This being objected to by the profession, Willis graduated as a doctor of medicine at Oxford in 1759. He established an asylum for the insane at Greatford, and obtained such a reputation for success in the treatment of mental disease that his fame reached the court, and he was called in to give an opinion in the case of George III. The opinion expressed by Dr. Willis was in favour of the king's recovery, who was thereupon intrusted to his care. The prognosis proved correct, and Dr. Willis was rewarded with a pension of £1500 per annum for twenty-one years. He was afterwards called to attend the queen of Portugal, who was suffering from the same malady. He was fortunate enough to be again successful, and was rewarded by a fee of £20,000. His last days were spent at Greatford, where he died suddenly in his ninetieth year on 5th December, 1807. Willis possessed remarkable personal influence over his patients. On George III. being attacked a second time, Dr. Willis' son. Dr. Robert Darling Willis, who had succeeded his father at Greatford, was sent for, and appointed one of the king's physicians in ordinary.—F. C. W.
WILLIS, Nathaniel Parker, an American writer of prose and verse, was born at Portland in the state of Maine, on
