[1][2] In 1837 Williams was ordained, and on 22 September 1838 he was appointed by Eton College to the perpetual curacies of Great Bricet and Wattisham, which he held until Michaelmas 1840.
In 1848 he was also nominated as Chaplain at Stockholm by the Bishop of London, Charles James Blomfield, but was unable to take up the post owing to his duties at King's.
The college was mainly kept in existence by the support of Lord John George de la Poer Beresford, the archbishop of Armagh.
When, in 1853, Williams joined with George Anthony Denison, Edward Pusey and others in protests against the actions of Samuel Gobat, the then bishop of Jerusalem, for attempting to convert adherents of the Greek Orthodox church, the archbishop called on him to resign.
[4] Williams made a long journey in Russia in 1860, with a view to spreading knowledge of the benefits available for foreign communities at English universities; and he printed in that year a French tract on the project to establish at Cambridge hostels for visitors of the Greek or Armenian churches, but nothing came from the scheme.
[1] After a tour in the East with the Marquess of Bute, and several years in residence at Cambridge, Williams was presented by his college on 9 February 1869 to the vicarage of Ringwood in Hampshire.
He died suddenly at the Church Farm, Harbridge, one of the chapelries of Ringwood, on 26 January 1878, and was buried at Harbridge on 1 Feb. A reredos was erected in Ringwood church as a memorial to his memory, a prize for distinction in the theological Tripos was founded at Cambridge, and a bronze tablet, with a portrait-bust in relief, designed by W. Burgess, R.A., was placed in King's College chapel.
[1] Williams invited Ermete Pierotti to Cambridge, assisted him in preparing his work of Jerusalem Explored for the press, and revised it during printing.
[1] Williams edited in 1868 The Orthodox Church of the East in the Eighteenth Century, correspondence between the eastern patriarchs and the nonjuring bishops on the reunion of the Greek church and the Anglican communion; and he edited, with introduction and an appendix of illustrative documents, for the Rolls Series, in 1872, two volumes of official correspondence of Thomas Beckington.