Henry Williams (11 February 1792 – 16 July 1867) was the leader of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in New Zealand in the first half of the 19th century.

[3][4][5] Although Williams was not the first missionary in New Zealand – Thomas Kendall, John Gare Butler, John King and William Hall having come before him – he was "the first to make the mission a success, partly because the others had opened up the way, but largely because he was the only man brave enough, stubborn enough, and strong enough to keep going, no matter what the dangers, and no matter what enemies he made".

In 1794, Thomas and Mary Williams and their six children moved to Nottingham, then the thriving centre of the East Midlands industrial revolution.

In 1804, when Thomas Williams died of typhus at the age of 50, his wife was left with a heavily mortgaged business with five sons and three daughters to look after.

He then served on HMS Maida under Captain Samuel Hood Linzee during the Battle of Copenhagen when the Danish fleet was seized in 1807.

[16][17][13][Note 3] After the outbreak of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States, he served on HMS Saturn as part of the blockading squadron off New York City.

He was transferred to HMS Endymion and served under Captain Henry Hope in the action on 14 January 1815 against the American warship USS President.

When the latter was forced to surrender, Williams was a member of the small prize crew that sailed the badly damaged vessel to port, after riding out a storm and quelling a rebellion of the American prisoners.

After service at Madras and Calcutta, it was on into the cold American winter and that epic last naval engagement in which he took part, on the Endymion".

[21] They had eleven children:[23] Edward Garrard Marsh, the husband of their sister Lydia, would play an important role in the life of Henry and William.

[37] The members of the CMS were under the protection of Hongi Hika, the rangatira (chief) and war leader of the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe).

[49] This incident and others in which Williams faced down belligerent chiefs, contributed to his growing mana among the Māori by established to the Māori that Williams had a forceful personality, "[a]lthough his capacity to comprehend the indigenous culture was severely constrained by his evangelical Christianity, his obduracy was in some ways an advantage in dealings with the Maori.

Kendall travelled to London in 1820 with Hongi Hika and Waikato (a lower ranking Ngāpuhi chief) during which time work was done with Professor Samuel Lee, which resulted in the First Grammar and Vocabulary of the New Zealand Language (1820).

When the highly respected Samuel Marsden arrived on a visit, he and Williams attempted to negotiate a settlement in which Kororāreka would be ceded by Pōmare II (nephew of Pōmare I, originally called Whiria, also called Whetoi)[76] as compensation for Hengi's death, which was accepted by those engaged in the fighting.

[77] However the duty of seeking revenge had passed to Mango and Kakaha, the sons of Hengi, they took the view that the death of their father should be acknowledged through a muru,[51] or war expedition against tribes to the south.

[78] Willams accompanied the first expedition, without necessarily believing that he could end the fighting, but with the intention of continuing to persuade the combatants as to the Christian message of peace and goodwill.

[79] By 1844 the conversion of Ngāpuhi chiefs to Christianity contributed to a significant reduction in the number of incidents of intertribal warfare in the north.

From December 1839 to January 1840 Williams returned over land through Whanganui, Taupo, Rotorua, and Tauranga, the first European who had undertaken that journey.

Reihana, a Christian who had spent time in the Bay of Islands, had bought for himself 60 acres (24 hectares) of land in Te Aro, in what is now central Wellington.

"[91] Upon arriving in Whanganui, Williams records, "After breakfast, held council with the chiefs respecting their land, as they were in considerable alarm lest the Europeans should take possession of the county.

"[92] The Church Missionary Society in London rejected Williams' request for support for this practice of acquiring land on trust for the benefit of the Māori.

The Church Missionary Society did not want to be in direct conflict with the New Zealand Company as its leaders had influence within the Tory government led by Sir Robert Peel.

Bishop Broughton wrote to Williams in January 1840 to recommend that "your influence should be exercised among the chiefs attached to you, to induce them to make the desired surrender of sovereignty to Her Majesty".

[97] On 5 February 1840 the original English version of the treaty and its translation into Māori were put before a gathering of northern chiefs inside a large marquee on the lawn in front of Busby's house at Waitangi.

[52] In the 1830s Williams purchased 11,000 acres (5,420 hectares) from Te Morenga of Pakaraka in the Tai-a-mai district, inland from the Bay of Islands,[103][104] to provide employment and financial security for his six sons and five daughters as the Church Missionary Society had no arrangements for pensions or other maintenance of CMS missionaries and their families who lived in New Zealand.

[18] These land purchases were used by the notorious John Dunmore Lang, of New South Wales, as a theme for a virulent attack on the CMS mission in New Zealand in the second of four "Letters To the Right Hon.

Among the recent proclamations in the Government Gazette of the 24th instant, is one respecting some letters found in the pa at Ruapekapeka, and stating that his Excellency, although aware that they were of a treasonable nature, ordered them to be consigned to the flames, without either perusing or allowing a copy of them to be taken.

Cowards and knaves in the full sense of the terms, they have pursued their traitorous schemes, afraid to risk their own persons, yet artfully sacrificing others for their own aggrandizement, while, probably at the same time, they were most hypocritically professing most zealous loyalty.

In a letter of 25 June 1846 to William Ewart Gladstone, the Colonial Secretary in Sir Robert Peel's government, Governor Grey referred to the land acquired by the CMS missionaries and commented that "Her Majesty's Government may also rest satisfied that these individuals cannot be put in possession of these tracts of land without a large expenditure of British blood and money".

The Revd Matthew Taupaki lead the fundraising of £200 among the Ngāpuhi for a monumental stone in memory of Archdeacon Williams.