Author: Williams, John Ambrose
Biography:
WILLIAMS, John Ambrose (1792-1854: ancestry.co.uk)
There are clues to his birth--he named his mother “Anna” in a poem and gave his birthplace as Bristol, Somerset, in the 1851 census--but the surname is common and there are a number of candidates so he cannot yet be identified with any certainty. Nothing is known of his education. In 1815 Metrical Essays appeared and was listed by Watkins (1816) with no biographical details. He then published Memoirs of John Philip Kemble (1817), which included a sonnet to Kemble written at Islington the previous year. He became the first editor and proprietor of the Durham Chronicle in 1820 but was soon prosecuted for libel when he attacked the clergy for not allowing the bells to be tolled on the death of Queen Caroline in 1821 and on their management of church revenues. Despite a celebrated defence by Henry, Lord Brougham (1778-1868), he was convicted the following year but suffered no penalty (Trial of John Ambrose Williams, for a Libel on the Clergy . . . Tuesday, August 6th 1822 [Durham 1822].) He probably returned to London not long afterwards but details of his later career are not known. In 1851 he gave his occupation as author and was lodging at 6 Upper Gloucester Street, Clerkenwell. He died on 28 May 1854, aged 62, at Acton Street, King’s Cross, and was buried at St. Giles in the Fields. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Apr. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 21 Apr. 2024; Newcastle Journal 3 June 1854; GRO death cert.) AA