Henry WILLIAMS

1792 - 1867  (75 years)

• Name	Henry WILLIAMS
  Birth	11 Feb 1792
  Christening	13 Apr 1792	Gosport, Hampshire, England   [1]
  Gender	Male
  Death	16 Jul 1867	Paihia, New Zealand
  Person ID	I122	Blyth Family Tree
  Last Modified	22 Dec 2025

  
  

  Father	Thomas WILLIAMS,   b. 27 May 1753, Gosport, Hampshire, England d. 6 Jan 1804, Sneinton, Nottinghamshire, England (Age 50 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Mother	Mary MARSH,   b. 10 Apr 1756, Gosport, Hampshire, England d. 7 Nov 1831 (Age 75 years)
  Relationship	natural
  Marriage	17 Apr 1783	Holy Trinity, Gosport, Hampshire, England   [2]
  Family ID	F60	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  According to family information Henry Williams was born on 11 February 1 7 92; he was baptised on 13 April at Gosport, Hampshire, England. He was t h e fifth child and third son of Thomas Williams, a lace manufacturer, a n d his wife, Mary Marsh. His parents were relatively well off until the d e ath of his father in 1804. Two years later, at the age of 14, Henry en t ered the Royal Navy as a midshipman, with aspirations to be an officer . T he nearly 10 years that he spent in the navy were far from easy; con di tions on naval vessels were extremely harsh during the Napoleonic war s . Having seen active service in many parts of the world he was dischar g ed from the navy in August 1815 as a lieutenant on half pay. The last c a ptain under whom he served noted that he had behaved with diligence an d s obriety. With the end of the Napoleonic wars unemployment, particularly among ha l fpay lieutenants, was very high; Henry had to find a new vocation. He w o rked for a while as a drawing master, but at the same time began to pr e pare himself for the mission field. His parents were Dissenters, and l i ke many missionaries who came from homes influenced by evangelical Chr i stianity, he experienced a gradual conversion rather than a sudden ill u mination. From about 1816 he came under the tutelage of his evangelica l b rother-in-law, Edward Marsh, a member of the Church Missionary Socie ty a nd later vicar of Aylesford. But his firm decision to become a miss ion ary was probably made after his marriage to Marianne Coldham at Nune ha m Courtenay, Oxfordshire, on 20 January 1818. In 1819 Henry Williams offered his services to the CMS. He was accepted f i rst as a lay settler, and then in 1820 as a missionary candidate. Alth o ugh Marsh thought that he had no 'great proficiency in the Greek and L a tin language', he was ordained a priest 'for the cure of souls in his m a jesty's foreign possessions' in 1822. Before leaving for New Zealand h e a lso took instruction in the practical areas of medicine, weaving, tw in ing, basket making, and, during the voyage out, shipbuilding. With Ma r ianne and three children he arrived at the Bay of Islands on the Bramp t on on 3 August 1823. Henry Williams was severely tested during the early months in the Bay o f I slands, as he assumed the leadership of a mission beset by problems. T h e CMS mission to New Zealand was nearly 10 years old when he arrived, b u t not a single Maori had been converted. The missionaries were still l a rgely dependent on the Maori for food and supplies; and under the lead e rship of Thomas Kendall and John Butler the mission had been torn apar t b y bitter personal disputes. Having settled himself and his family at Paihia, Henry first attended t o t he secular side of the mission. He wanted to reduce the missionaries ' i nvolvement with the trading captains of Kororareka (Russell), to end t h eir dependence on the Maori for supplies, and most of all he wanted to s t op the musket trade in which the missionaries had been forced to engag e . He quickly imposed regulations on the missionaries' trading, but it w a s the completion in 1826, under Henry's direction, of the 50 ton schoo n er Herald that really made the mission independent of local influences . Meantime Henry had also put his mind to the spiritual aspect of mission a ry work. He soon concluded that the mission had placed too much emphas i s on 'civilising' the Maori. In this he differed from Samuel Marsden, f o under of the mission, who had emphasised teaching useful arts and agri c ulture as a prelude to conversion. Henry argued that the emphasis on s e cular instruction distracted the missionaries from the far more import a nt task of bringing the Maori to Christianity. He began to reorganise t h e mission so that more time could be devoted to spiritual teaching. To better carry out this essential task, Henry argued that mission memb e rs needed to spend more time learning the Maori language, preaching to t h e tribes in the surrounding area, and teaching in the schools on the m i ssion stations; to do all these things most of the personnel would hav e t o be concentrated in one place. Paihia became the headquarters and t he re the missionaries began by devoting regular amounts of time to lear n ing Maori together. The arrival of Henry's brother William, in 1826, g a ve a great impetus to this programme: all members benefited from Willi a m's talent for languages. Having more missionaries at one station mean t t hat they were able to visit the surrounding villages more frequently a n d, as they became proficient in Maori, their preaching was more effect i ve. Schooling for Maori children was revitalised under Henry and his w i fe, Marianne, and more students attended classes regularly. Working ef f ectively together fostered harmonious relations among the missionaries t h emselves; Henry claimed that the Maori noticed their greater unity and p u rpose. Henry Williams's forceful personality and discipline were perhaps as im p ortant as his policies in reorganising the mission, and these characte r istics also contributed to his growing mana among the Maori. Although h i s capacity to comprehend the indigenous culture was severely constrain e d by his evangelical Christianity, his obduracy was in some ways an ad v antage in dealings with the Maori. From the time of his arrival he ref u sed to be intimidated by the threats and boisterous actions of utu and m u ru plundering parties. By the late 1820s he felt confident enough to i n tervene in intertribal disputes and on several occasions was able to n e gotiate peace between hostile groups. Such peacemaking was both a caus e a nd a consequence of his growing prestige among the Maori. Only a per so n who was held in regard would be invited to settle a conflict, and i t r equired even greater mana to be successful. As his personal repute g re w, so did the influence of the mission. The 1830s were a decade of achievement and progress for Henry Williams a n d the CMS mission. Success could be measured in two ways: increasing n u mbers of Maori were baptised, and the Bay of Islands mission was secur e e nough to provide a base for expansion throughout the North Island. T he re had been occasional baptisms in earlier years, but, beginning in 1 8 29--30, several Maori adults and children were baptised at Paihia. By 1 8 42 over 3,000 Maori in the Bay of Islands area had been baptised. No d o ubt Maori motives for 'going missionary' were often mixed and there wa s c onsiderable backsliding in later years, but, as Maori conversions in cr eased, the missionaries were successful, at least in their own terms. T h eir growing confidence in the north enabled them to extend their opera t ions to the south. Here, too, Henry Williams played a leading role. He m a de several trips to other parts of the North Island to explore the pos s ibilities for expansion, and directed the establishment of new mission s . He sent missionaries to begin work at several places in the Waikato d u ring the 1830s, his brother William moved to Turanga, in Poverty Bay, a t t he end of the decade, and stations were founded as far south as Otak i. B y 1840 Henry could look with considerable satisfaction on the achie vem ents of the CMS mission since his arrival in 1823. But 1840 was also a year of major changes, both for New Zealand and, al t hough he did not appreciate it immediately, for Henry Williams. With t h e country's annexation by Britain and a growing population of settlers , H enry became embroiled in racial conflict and caught up by forces tha t w ere beyond his control. Rather than simply ministering to one race, h e w as drawn into the increasingly uncomfortable role of mediating betwe en t wo races. The ambiguity of his position was apparent at the signing of the Treaty o f W aitangi in 1840. Henry translated the English draft of the treaty in to M aori, and, at the meetings with the Crown's representative, William H o bson, at Waitangi, he explained its provisions to Maori leaders. Later h e t ravelled to the west coast of the North Island, between Wellington a nd W anganui, and to the Marlborough Sounds to persuade other Maori to s ign t he treaty. However, his Maori version of the treaty was not a lite ral t ranslation from the English draft and did not convey clearly the c essi on of sovereignty. Moreover, in his discussions with Maori leaders H en ry placed the treaty in the best possible light and this, and his man a , were major factors in the treaty's acceptance. Undoubtedly, therefor e , he must bear some of the responsibility for the failure of the Treat y o f Waitangi to provide the basis for peaceful settlement and a lastin g u nderstanding between Maori and European. As Maori-European relations deteriorated in the north in the early 1840 s , Henry Williams tried to maintain peace between the races, as he had d o ne earlier between tribes. In spite of his efforts the conflict over l a nd and sovereignty soon moved beyond the possibility of compromise. Ha v ing failed to prevent hostilities he assisted the wounded and helped e v acuate the beleaguered settlers when Hone Heke launched a final attack o n K ororareka in 1845. His close association with the Bay of Islands Mao ri p roduced accusations of disloyalty from Europeans, while the station ing o f British troops at the Waimate mission created suspicion in the m inds o f some Maori. Other Maori accused him of misleading them in his e xplan ations of the treaty. Throughout the conflict, as in later life, H enry a sserted that his missionary vocation was paramount and that his p rimar y concern was for the Maori, but it was difficult to be single-min ded w hen he was assailed from all sides. The arrival of George Grey to begin his first governorship in late 1845 s o on led to Henry Williams's involvement in disputes of another kind. Du r ing the 1830s, mostly to provide some security for his growing family, H e nry had purchased extensive tracts of land in the Tai-a-mai area, west o f P aihia. In dispatches to the Colonial Office that later became public , G rey questioned the validity of Henry's title to the land and falsely c l aimed that the landholdings of the CMS missionaries were a cause of th e w ar in the north. Henry was obliged to defend his land purchases and, m u ch more important as far as he was concerned, his personal integrity a g ainst the governor's charges. But he was fighting a losing battle agai n st a more powerful adversary. Henry's superior, Bishop G. A. Selwyn, s i ded with Grey, and in 1849 the CMS in London, persuaded by Henry Willi a ms's critics, decided that Henry was too much of an embarrassment to r e main a member of the organisation. His dismissal from the CMS that he had served for so long was a bitter b l ow to Henry. Within a week of receiving the news in May 1850 he left P a ihia and moved to Pakaraka, where his children were farming the land t h at was the source of so much trouble. He was still a priest in the Chu r ch of England and Selwyn had made him archdeacon of Waimate in 1844; h e c ontinued to minister and preach to the Maori in his locality and gat he red a considerable congregation around him. The injustice against him w a s only partly assuaged when he was reinstated to the CMS in 1854. Henry Williams's abiding concern for the Maori was apparent in his dist r ess at the outbreak of warfare with the Pakeha again in 1860. In priva t e correspondence he was critical of the government officials and their p o licies, but he remained largely aloof from the public debate about the w a r. In 1862 he wrote to his brother-in-law, Edward Marsh: 'I feel our w o rk is drawing to a close; and were it not for the Maories, I should ha v e relinquished all long since. But I feel bound to them'. After severa l y ears of deteriorating health, Henry Williams died on 16 July 1867. H is p assing was perhaps most keenly felt by the northern Maori among who m h e had lived for most of his life. -- MERGED NOTE ------------ According to family information Henry Williams was born on 11 February 1 7 92; he was baptised on 13 April at Gosport, Hampshire, England. He was t h e fifth child and third son of Thomas Williams, a lace manufacturer, a n d his wife, Mary Marsh. His parents were relatively well offuntil the d e ath of his father in 1804. Two years later, at the age of14, Henry ent e red the Royal Navy as a midshipman, with aspirations tobe an officer. T h e nearly 10 years that he spent in the navy were farfrom easy; conditi o ns on naval vessels were extremely harsh during the Napoleonic wars. H a ving seen active service in many parts of the world he was discharged f r om the navy in August 1815 as a lieutenant on half pay. The last capta i n under whom he served noted that he had behaved with diligence and so b riety. With the end of the Napoleonic wars unemployment, particularly among ha l fpay lieutenants, was very high; Henry had to find a new vocation. He w o rked for a while as a drawing master, but at the same time began to pr e pare himself for the mission field. His parents were Dissenters,and li k e many missionaries who came from homes influenced by evangelical Chri s tianity, he experienced a gradual conversion rather than a sudden illu m ination. From about 1816 he came under the tutelage of his evangelical b r other-in-law, Edward Marsh, a member of the Church Missionary Society a n d later vicar of Aylesford. But his firm decision to become a missiona r y was probably made after his marriage to Marianne Coldham at Nuneham C o urtenay, Oxfordshire, on 20 January 1818. In 1819 Henry Williams offered his services to the CMS. He was accepted f i rst as a lay settler, and then in 1820 as a missionary candidate.Altho u gh Marsh thought that he had no 'great proficiency in the Greekand Lat i n language', he was ordained a priest 'for the cure of souls in his ma j esty's foreign possessions' in 1822. Before leaving for New Zealand he a l so took instruction in the practical areas of medicine, weaving, twini n g, basket making, and, during the voyage out, shipbuilding. With Maria n ne and three children he arrived at the Bay of Islands on the Brampton o n 3 A ugust 1823. Henry Williams was severely tested during the early months in the Bayof I s lands, as he assumed the leadership of a mission beset by problems. Th e C MS mission to New Zealand was nearly 10 years old when he arrived, b ut n ot a single Maori had been converted. The missionaries werestill la rge ly dependent on the Maori for food and supplies; and underthe leader sh ip of Thomas Kendall and John Butler the mission had beentorn apart b y b itter personal disputes. Having settled himself and his family at Paihia, Henry first attendedto t h e secular side of the mission. He wanted to reduce the missionaries' i n volvement with the trading captains of Kororareka (Russell), toend the i r dependence on the Maori for supplies, and most of all he wanted to s t op the musket trade in which the missionaries had been forced to engag e . He quickly imposed regulations on the missionaries' trading, but it w a s the completion in 1826, under Henry's direction, of the 50 ton schoo n er Herald that really made the mission independent of local influences . Meantime Henry had also put his mind to the spiritual aspect of mission a ry work. He soon concluded that the mission had placed too much emphas i s on 'civilising' the Maori. In this he differed from Samuel Marsden, f o under of the mission, who had emphasised teaching useful arts and agri c ulture as a prelude to conversion. Henry argued that the emphasis on s e cular instruction distracted the missionaries from the far more import a nt task of bringing the Maori to Christianity. He began to reorganise t h e mission so that more time could be devoted to spiritual teaching. To better carry out this essential task, Henry argued that mission memb e rs needed to spend more time learning the Maori language, preachingto t h e tribes in the surrounding area, and teaching in the schools onthe mi s sion stations; to do all these things most of the personnel would have t o b e concentrated in one place. Paihia became the headquarters and ther e t he missionaries began by devoting regular amounts of time to learnin g M aori together. The arrival of Henry's brother William,in 1826, gave a g r eat impetus to this programme: all members benefited from William's ta l ent for languages. Having more missionaries at one station meant that t h ey were able to visit the surrounding villagesmore frequently and, as t h ey became proficient in Maori, their preaching was more effective. Sch o oling for Maori children was revitalised under Henry and his wife, Mar i anne, and more students attended classes regularly. Working effectivel y t ogether fostered harmonious relations among the missionaries themsel ve s; Henry claimed that the Maori noticed their greater unity and purpo s e. Henry Williams's forceful personality and discipline were perhaps as im p ortant as his policies in reorganising the mission, and these characte r istics also contributed to his growing mana among the Maori. Although h i s capacity to comprehend the indigenous culture was severely constrain e d by his evangelical Christianity, his obduracy was in some ways an ad v antage in dealings with the Maori. From the time of his arrival he ref u sed to be intimidated by the threats and boisterous actions of utu and m u ru plundering parties. By the late 1820s he felt confident enough to i n tervene in intertribal disputes and on several occasions was able to n e gotiate peace between hostile groups. Such peacemaking was both a caus e a nd a consequence of his growing prestige among the Maori. Only a per so n who was held in regard would be invited to settle a conflict, and i t r equired even greater mana to be successful. Ashis personal repute gr ew , so did the influence of the mission. The 1830s were a decade of achievement and progress for Henry Williams a n d the CMS mission. Success could be measured in two ways: increasing n u mbers of Maori were baptised, and the Bay of Islands mission wassecure e n ough to provide a base for expansion throughout the North Island. Ther e h ad been occasional baptisms in earlier years, but, beginning in 1829 -- 30, several Maori adults and children were baptised at Paihia. By 184 2 o ver 3,000 Maori in the Bay of Islands area had been baptised. No dou bt M aori motives for 'going missionary' were often mixed and there was c on siderable backsliding in later years, but, as Maori conversions incre a sed, the missionaries were successful, at least in their own terms. Th e ir growing confidence in the north enabled them to extend their operat i ons to the south. Here, too, Henry Williams playeda leading role. He m a de several trips to other parts of the North Island to explore the pos s ibilities for expansion, and directed the establishment of new mission s . He sent missionaries to begin work at several places in the Waikato d u ring the 1830s, his brother William moved to Turanga, in Poverty Bay, a t t he end of the decade, and stations were founded as far south as Otak i. B y 1840 Henry could look with considerable satisfaction on the achie vem ents of the CMS mission since his arrival in 1823. But 1840 was also a year of major changes, both for New Zealand and, al t hough he did not appreciate it immediately, for Henry Williams. With t h e country's annexation by Britain and a growing population of settlers , H enry became embroiled in racial conflict and caught up by forces tha t w ere beyond his control. Rather than simply ministering to onerace, h e w as drawn into the increasingly uncomfortable role of mediating betwe en t wo races. The ambiguity of his position was apparent at the signing of the Treaty o f W aitangi in 1840. Henry translated the English draft of the treaty in to M aori, and, at the meetings with the Crown's representative, William H o bson, at Waitangi, he explained its provisions to Maori leaders. Later h e t ravelled to the west coast of the North Island, between Wellington a nd W anganui, and to the Marlborough Sounds to persuade other Maori to s ign t he treaty. However, his Maori version of the treaty was not a lite ral t ranslation from the English draft and did not convey clearly the c essi on of sovereignty. Moreover, in his discussions with Maori leaders H en ry placed the treaty in the best possible light and this, and his man a , were major factors in the treaty's acceptance. Undoubtedly, therefor e , he must bear some of the responsibility for the failure of the Treat y o f Waitangi to provide the basis for peacefulsettlement and a lasting u n derstanding between Maori and European. As Maori-European relations deteriorated in the north in the early 1840 s , Henry Williams tried to maintain peace between the races, as he had d o ne earlier between tribes. In spite of his efforts the conflict over l a nd and sovereignty soon moved beyond the possibility of compromise. Ha v ing failed to prevent hostilities he assisted the wounded and helped e v acuate the beleaguered settlers when Hone Heke launched a final attack o n K ororareka in 1845. His close association with the Bay ofIslands Maor i p roduced accusations of disloyalty from Europeans, while the stationi ng o f British troops at the Waimate mission created suspicion in the mi nds o f some Maori. Other Maori accused him of misleading them in his ex plan ations of the treaty. Throughout the conflict, asin later life, Hen ry a sserted that his missionary vocation was paramount and that his pri mar y concern was for the Maori, but it was difficult to be single-minde d w hen he was assailed from all sides. The arrival of George Grey to begin his first governorship in late 1845 s o on led to Henry Williams's involvement in disputes of another kind. Du r ing the 1830s, mostly to provide some security for his growing family, H e nry had purchased extensive tracts of land in the Tai-a-mai area, west o f P aihia. In dispatches to the Colonial Office that later became public , G rey questioned the validity of Henry's title to the land and falsely c l aimed that the landholdings of the CMS missionaries were a cause of th e w ar in the north. Henry was obliged to defend his land purchases and, m u ch more important as far as he was concerned, hispersonal integrity ag a inst the governor's charges. But he was fighting a losing battle again s t a more powerful adversary. Henry's superior, Bishop G. A. Selwyn, si d ed with Grey, and in 1849 the CMS in London, persuaded by Henry Willia m s's critics, decided that Henry was too much of an embarrassment to re m ain a member of the organisation. His dismissal from the CMS that he had served for so long was a bitter b l ow to Henry. Within a week of receiving the news in May 1850 he left P a ihia and moved to Pakaraka, where his children were farming the land t h at was the source of so much trouble. He was still a priest in the Chu r ch of England and Selwyn had made him archdeacon of Waimate in1844; he c o ntinued to minister and preach to the Maori in his locality and gather e d a considerable congregation around him. The injustice against him wa s o nly partly assuaged when he was reinstated to the CMSin 1854. Henry Williams's abiding concern for the Maori was apparent in his dist r ess at the outbreak of warfare with the Pakeha again in 1860. In priva t e correspondence he was critical of the government officials and their p o licies, but he remained largely aloof from the public debate about the w a r. In 1862 he wrote to his brother-in-law, Edward Marsh: 'I feel our w o rk is drawing to a close; and were it not for the Maories,I should hav e r elinquished all long since. But I feel bound to them'.After several y e ars of deteriorating health, Henry Williams died on 16 July 1867. His p a ssing was perhaps most keenly felt by the northernMaori among whom he h a d lived for most of his life.

  
  

• Sources

  [S28] Dictionary Of New Zealand Biography, Dictionary Of New Zealand Biography- Henry Williams. [S53] Lionel Klee, Klee Family Genealogy, Klee And Block Family Genalogy (http://genealogy.eproject.co.nz/).