Instigated by the tercentenary of its benefactor's death, Alan Argent's history of Dr Williams's Trust and Library is a full and detailed account of the activities and leading persons involved in the over-300-year history of this philanthropic organization. The book follows a linear chronology, with information on the main elements of the Trust's charitable work found in each chapter and carried through to the present day. Dr. Argent's work is based on a thorough examination of Dr Williams's Trust Archives; Dr Williams's Library archival, book, and portrait collections; and several archival collections elsewhere. It tells an important and fascinating story about the impact and legacy of these institutions from the early eighteenth to the early twenty-first century.
The book begins with a brief biographical sketch of the founder, Daniel Williams. Born in the Welsh border town of Wrexham, Williams began preaching at a young age. In the mid-1660s, he accepted a position as a personal chaplain in Ireland and there became connected with Irish Presbyterianism and Independency. After over two decades in Ireland, he relocated to London in the late 1680s, and became a leading figure of English Protestant dissent in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These elements of Williams's life become the principal influences upon his will and his legacy.
It is upon Williams's death in 1716 where the principal subject matter of this book commences. After providing for surviving family members, Daniel Williams's will left the majority of his accumulated wealth to charitable causes. These included the upkeep of schools and paying teachers to oversee the Christian education of youth in Wales and elsewhere; distributing bibles and other religious literature; gifts to support ministers and their widows; endowments to pay for itinerant preachers in Wales and Ireland; money to support students at Glasgow University; funds for the Society for the Reformation of Manners and for the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge; money for the New England Company to sponsor itinerant preachers in the West Indies; and money for Harvard College (later University). In addition, the will called for the purchase of a property in London to house Williams's books and possible future donations to the collection, a reading room, and a catalogue of the collection. The bulk of the book traces the lines of these endowments from Williams's will across the subsequent three centuries.
The properties that provided the ongoing funding for these causes were placed in the hands of twenty-three trustees, whom Williams named in his will, and their successors for 2,000 years. The structure of the book is organized around the leadership of the Trust, first found in the position of Receiver and then later in the positions of Secretary and Librarian, with each chapter based on a term of service of one of those leading members of the Trust. However, even with the use of the book's index, it is sometimes challenging to follow specific charitable channels through many different chapters. In addition, some chapters are very short (less than ten pages), suggesting those periods of time and leadership did not work as well within the book's structure. Perhaps structuring the work around thematic chapters might have been more accessible, particularly for scholars whose interests may lie in particular aspects of the Trust's or Library's work rather than in the whole of their history.
The book contains the details of specific circumstances of the business of the Trust in its efforts to fulfill the purposes that Williams had laid out in his will, as well as giving some sense of the wider historical context within England. The latter includes the changing nature of English dissent from the early 1700s into the nineteenth century and beyond, and theological disputes, as well as the impact of events such as two world wars; in places, note is also made of readers who came to use the library. These connections, between the particulars of the Trust's business and affairs and larger British society, will be of interest to most readers. Had there been room, it would have been useful to see even more of those points of contact more fully explored and analyzed.
As the title suggests, the other major lasting legacy of Williams's will is the library that bears his name. By the early 1720s, trustees were searching for a suitable property in London, and in 1727 a site was purchased. Books began to be moved into the purpose-built building in 1730. That original site in Red Cross Street was home to Dr Williams's Library for 135 years, until the later nineteenth century when, after moving to two temporary sites in 1864 and 1873, it relocated in 1890 to its current location of University Hall in Gordon Square in London.
The story of the library's collection is also traced in significant detail. As Williams had expected, dissenting ministers and others began to leave gifts and donations of books and other items to the library within a decade or so after his death. The will also called for catalogues to be produced to benefit those who would use the library. The Trust also made funds available for the purchase of books. Today the collection includes about 135,000 printed volumes (approximately half of these from before 1851), about 90 major manuscript holdings, and a large collection of portraits mostly connected to the history of the English dissenting tradition. True to Williams's intentions, the collection includes books on Christian theology and church history, but it also includes volumes on philosophy, Hebrew traditions, and on early medicine and science. The book tells of efforts to allow more public access to the library by permitting visiting readers to use the collection, as well as allowing the borrowing of items by mail, though, as Argent notes, it should be even better known that it is.
This book is a carefully researched and focused account of the long and significant legacy of Dr. Williams's philanthropy. It clearly provides an important study of, and tribute to, that lasting history and value of the Trust and the Library that continue the work he intended. It provides an account of an important institution in the history of English Protestant dissent, and it will be a useful reference work for scholars of the wider history of that tradition.
