Revd Eliezer Williams

Lampeter’s grammar school, the Mutiny on the Bounty and Sir Walter Scott

Directly opposite St Peter’s main churchyard gates is the small building erected to house Lampeter’s famous grammar school, which was founded, at the behest of Bishop Burgess of St Davids, by the polymath Reverend Eliezer Williams (1754–1820) when he became vicar in 1805.

Locally born, Williams matriculated from Jesus College, Oxford in 1775 and soon, as a curate in Wellingford in Berkshire, was befriended by the bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, and offered the position of his chaplain. An impetuous Williams, much to his regret in later life, refused the position and instead in 1780, went to sea as chaplain of HMS Cambridge, an eighty-gun battleship.

He was present at the Relief of Gibraltar in 1782 and the Battle of Cape Spartel in the same year. One of the officers of the Cambridge, was Lieutenant William Bligh, who in 1789, commanded HMS Bounty when her crew mutinied and another Cambridge crewman was a young Fletcher Christian, later the Bounty mutineer’s leader.

The role of ship’s chaplain often incorporated the duty of educating the ship’s boys and young midshipmen, so Williams would have known Christian well, as well as sharing the ship’s officer-facilities with Bligh.

Williams left his naval duties and pursued a largely academic career, gaining renown in genealogical research and writing a series of works on Welsh history and language. He also spent a period as chaplain to the garrison of Tilbury Fort and published much poetry.

His school in Lampeter flourished, and under his successor as vicar, Archdeacon John Williams, the school attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who sent his son Charles Scott to study there.

St David’s College was founded in Lampeter in 1822 to prepare men for the Anglican ministry and under Llewelyn Lewellin, both vicar of St Peter’s and first Principal of the college, the school became part of that institution in 1833.

Lampeter Church

Dictionary of Welsh Biography