Penry Herbert Williams (25 February 1925 – 30 April 2013) was a Welsh historian of Elizabethan Britain.
[2] During the Second World War Williams served in India and Java as a member of the Royal Artillery.
He then read history at New College, Oxford, where J. E. Neale suggested he study Wales under the government of Elizabeth I.
[4][1] Williams argued that "the strength of Tudor government lay in a skilful combination of the formal and the informal, the official and the personal".
He also campaigned on behalf of asylum seekers, including those held at Campsfield House immigration detention centre, which he frequently visited.