David Williams (philosopher)
His early education was partly under John Smith, vicar of Eglwysilan, and he went on to a local school run by his namesake, David Williams.
David, an unfortunate speculator in mines and miners' tools, died in 1752; the family consisted of one surviving son and two daughters.
From February 1755 the London congregational board sent no students, owing to the alleged Arianism of Davies's assistant, Samuel Thomas.
His first publication, The Philosopher, in Three Conversations, 1771, (dedicated to Lord Mansfield and Bishop Warburton), containing a project of church reform, drew the attention of John Jebb.
According to a note by John Philip Kemble in the British Museum copy there was a second edition; Williams, in an advertisement at the end of his Lectures, 1779, vol.
In the Private Correspondence of David Garrick, 1831, is a letter (2 October 1772), signed D. Ws hinting that the published 'Letter' was by 'a young man who is making himself known us a first-rate genius.... His name is Williams.
In 1773 Williams took a house in Lawrence Street, Chelsea, married Mary Emilia, a woman without a fortune, and set up a school.
Franklin joined a small club formed at Chelsea by Williams, the manufacturer Thomas Bentley (partner of Josiah Wedgwood), and James "Athenian" Stuart.
[2] On 7 April 1776, Williams opened for morning service a vacant chapel near Cavendish Square (the building was replaced in 1858 by All Saints, Margaret Street), using his liturgy, and reading lectures, with texts usually from the Bible, sometimes from classic authors.
Copies of the liturgy were sent to Frederick the Great and to Voltaire, who returned appreciative letters in bad French and good English respectively.
International botanical travellers Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander 'now and then peeped into the chapel, and got away as fast as they decently could'.
Williams's Letter to the Body of Protestant Dissenters, 1777, is a plea for such breadth of toleration as would legally cover such services as his.
All the expenses fell on Williams, who was saved from ruin only by the subscription to his Lectures on the Universal Principles and Duties of Religion and Morality 1779.
No hint of it is conveyed in the satiric lampoon Orpheus, Priest of Nature 1781, which affirms, on the contrary, that Williams's principles were too strict for his hearers.
Jean-Marie Roland, vicomte de la Platière, a friend of Brissot, visited London in 1784, when Williams made his acquaintance.
Williams's publications at this period include Letters concerning Education 1785; Royal Recollections on a Tour to Cheltenham (anon.
The idea of a "literary fund" to aid "distressed talents" was again suggested by Williams in a club of six persons, formed on the discontinuance of his Sunday lectures (1780), and meeting at the Prince of Wales's coffee-house, Conduit Street.
Fruitless applications were made after 1783 to William Pitt the Younger (who thought the matter very important), Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Sir Joseph Banks.
At the instance of Dr. Hooper of Pant-y-Goetre and Morgan of Tredegar, Williams undertook to write a history of Monmouthshire, and in 1792 visited the county to collect materials.
He went over about August 1792, was made a French citizen, and remained till the execution (21 January 1793) of Louis XVI, a measure which he strongly deprecated.
An engagement previously entered into for completing the continuation of Hume's History of England was cancelled, owing to the political odium incurred by his visit to France.
His History of Monmouthshire, 1796, with illustrations drawn and partly engraved by his friend Gardner, and a very modest introduction, was considered a standard work on the subject; unfortunately it has no index.
[3] He was invited to take up his abode in the house of the Literary Fund, 36 Gerrard Street, Soho, and there he remained till his death, regularly attending the society's meetings.
