Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury

(1709-1757)

   Born in Pontypool, Glamorganshire, Wales where his father was the owner of an ironworks-he was educated at Eton College. After the grand tour and marriage to a wealthy heiress, he was elected member of Parliament for Monmouthshire upon the death of his father in 1734, and continued to represent the county to 1747. From 1742 to 1747 he was lord lieutenant of Herefordshire. he was created a Knight of the Bath in 1744, and from 1746 he was a diplomat and saw service in Italy and Germany. In Russia, the treaty he negotiated between England and Russia was revoked, on account of strong protests from Prussia. The disillusioned Williams retired to his estate at Coldbrook Park, Pontypool, where he committed suicide. Some of his poems: "A Lamentable Case," "An Ode on Miss Harriet Hanbury at Six Years Old," "An Ode to the Duke of Argyll," "Come, Chloe, and Give Me Sweet Kisses," "Isabella; or, the Morning," "Orpheus and Hecate, An Ode," "The Country Girl," "The Heroes: A New Ballad," "The Statesman."

   Sources: A Collection of Poems, Principally Consisting of the Most Celebrated Pieces of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (no publisher), 1763. An Uninhibited Treasury of Erotic Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. Dial Press, 1963. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1984. The Poetical Works of Sir William Jones. Thomas Park, ed. J. Sharpe, 1808.