WILLIAMS, JOHN (1757-1810), barrister

Born at Job's Well in Carmarthen town, 12 September 1757, the son of Thomas Williams. He entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1773, but graduated (1776) from Wadham College, of which in 1780 he was elected a Fellow. In 1784 he was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple and had a most successful career as counsel. But he was also interested in the history of the law : he was one of the joint editors of the 10th (1787), and 11th (1791) editions of Blackstone's Commentaries, and he furnished valuable additional notes to the 3rd ed. (1799-1802) of the Reports of Cases … in the King's Bench in the Reign of Charles II. He died 27 September 1810; see also the D.N.B.

One of his sons was

Sir EDWARD VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1797 - 1875), barrister and scholar,

who practised on the South Wales circuit. In 1847 he was raised to the bench in the Court of Common Pleas, a post which he held until his retirement in 1865 when he was appointed to the Privy Council. Apart from republishing, 1824, his father's notes on the law in Charles II's reign, he brought out, in 1832, a standard work, A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators, which ran into seven editions in his own life-time. He, too, finds a place in the D.N.B.

Sir ROWLAND LOMAX BOWDLER VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1838 - 1916), who sat as a judge

in the Queen's Bench and also in the Court of Appeal, was Sir Edward's son. He was chairman of the ill-assorted royal commission on the Church in Wales, 1906 (Who was Who).

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Published date: 1959

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