DEATH OF BISHOP WILLIAMS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2859, 25 August 1916, Page 6

DEATH OF BISHOP WILLIAMS

A GREAT WORKER FOR THE MAORIS. By Telegraph—Press Association. Napier, August 24. Bishop W. L. Williams died of heart failure at 7.30 to-night. [The late Bishop Williams was horn at Pahia, Bay of Islands, in 1829, and has been identified through his long lifts with work among tho who will mourn his loss as deeply as tha Europeans of the Dominion. He was the son of the late Bishop Williams, of Waiapu, who came to New Zealand as a worker of. the Church Missionary, Society as early as 1826. The Bishop, who has just died, the Right Rev. William Leonard • Williams, was baptised together with tho first Maori converts of his father's mission, four children of a redoubtable follower of Hongi. "Tho service was in Maori," wrote the late Dean Jacobs, in his "Colonial Church Histories, Now Zealand," "and was most solemn and impressive, all the missionaries at the station acting as sponsors." .The late Bishop was scut to England to bo educated, and was a student of Magdalen. Hall, now Hereford College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in. 1852. He was ordained deacon in 1853, and priest in 1856. In 1853 hewas appointed a missionary of the. C.M.S. at Gisborne, in the dioceso of Waiapu, aud in 1862 ho became Archdeacon of Waiapu, in which capacity ho laboured indetatigably till 1895. He took a leading part in recasting thelegislation of the Church in the form of canons, "a very important and. valuable work.". Dean Jacobs wrote,-."the result of a vast expenditure of thought and labour." As President of the Diocesan Synod he induced that body to take steps to provide an endowment to the See. .

It was noted that in his archdeaconate, which formed the middle district of the bishopric,' having Gisbome for its centre, the growth and consolidation of the Maori work were most marked.

On the retirement of his father from the Bishopric . of. in :1876, Archdeacon Williams was asked,, at a meeting of tho Diocesan Synod, over which no presided as commissary for his father, to allow himself to be nominated for the vacant office, but declined on the ground that work among the Maori population had the first claim upon him, and that there appeared to be no one else who could take up this special work. In 1883 ho was appointed Principal of tho Maori Theological College at Gisbome, in which capacity he continued until his appointment to the Bishopric of Wainpu, in : succession to Biihop Stuart, in 1895. He was consecrated in tho Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Napier, oh January 20 of that year. In 1897 he received his honorary D.D. degree. The late Bishop was tho author of "First Lessons in Maori," and editor of Williams's -'''Dictionary of the New Zealand language." He married, in 1853, a daughter of Mr. John Bradshaw Wanklyn, of Witherslack, Westmoreland! He leaves a family of five sons and four daughters.]