Author: Williams, Charles Hanbury
Biography:
WILLIAMS, Charles Hanbury, formerly Hanbury (1708-59: ODNB)
Williams is a “prior” author who owes his place in this bibliography to a posthumous edition of his works in three volumes that contains a substantial amount of poetry published from manuscript and thus some versions and variants that had been previously unpublished. The edition however has to be approached with caution because of anonymous works that may be wrongly attributed to him. The notes by Horace Walpole (1717-97) are based on Walpole’s annotated copy of the earlier Collection of Poems (1763). Williams was born in London on 8 Dec. 1708, one of the sons of John Hanbury (d 1734) and his second wife Bridget Ayscough (d 1741). He was educated at a London boarding-school and at Eton (1720-24), after which he made a Grand Tour of the Continent. As a condition of his inheritance of estates in Wales and a fortune, he took the name Williams in 1729. On 1 July 1732 he married the heiress Frances Coningsby (1709-81) at St. James’s, Piccadilly, London. The couple had two daughters but Williams was unfaithful. He infected his wife with syphilis and she refused to see him again. Following their separation in 1742, her fortune was restored to her and she retained custody of the children—who nevertheless remained on good terms with their father. Williams served as MP 1735-47 and 1754-9, occupying some government posts but useful to the whigs primarily as a writer of anonymous squibs and satires in the 1740s. After 1747 he was employed as a diplomat at Dresden, Berlin (briefly), and St. Petersburg, but he suffered from poor health and showed signs of mental instability that were probably caused by tertiary syphilis. After returning to England in Feb. 1758 he was in and out of confinement. In May 1759 he was declared insane and his property was transferred in trust to his brother. He died while under the care of the eminent mad-doctor John Munro (1716-91), at the Chelsea home of Lord Bolingbroke, on 2 Nov. 1759. According to some sources it was by his own hand but news reports were silent about the cause of death and he was ceremoniously buried in Westminster Abbey on 10 Nov. (ODNB 13 June 2024; historyofparliamentonline.org 13 June 2024; findmypast.com 13 June 2024; GM Nov. 1759, 551) HJ