He was born in London on 28 April 1761, and was sent in 1771 to
Merchant Taylors' School. There he was beaten for an
epigram on Mr. Knox, the third master. At the age of seventeen he was placed with a painter, but he gave up art to become an author and translator. When he was about eighteen he wrote a defence of
David Garrick against
William Kenrick, earning Garrick's friendship. About two years later he went to Ireland, and during his time in Dublin edited several periodical publications. He attacked the government in the ''Volunteers' Journal'' during the administration of the
Duke of Rutland, a prosecution was started against him in 1784, and he was obliged to decamp, leaving the printers to face the judgment. The same year (1784) he was associated with
Henry Bate Dudley in the
Morning Herald. A violent quarrel broke out between them, and Williams wrote a satire on his antagonist, for which he was prosecuted, though the action did not proceed. In 1787 Williams accompanied his friend Pilon to France, and on his return he started a paper called
The Brighton Guide. He next settled at
Bath, Somerset, but again left in a hurry. For some years he contributed influential theatrical criticism to some of the London newspapers. In 1797 he appeared in the
Court of King's Bench as plaintiff in an action against Robert Faulder, the bookseller, for a libel contained in
William Gifford's poem
The Baviad. In one of the notes Gifford, speaking of Williams, observed that ‘he was so lost to every sense of decency and shame that his acquaintance was infamy and his touch poison.’ In this cause the plaintiff was nonsuited, based the proof that was given of his having himself grossly libelled every respectable character in the kingdom, from the sovereign down to the lowest of his subjects.
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon, who tried the case, commended Gifford. Williams emigrated to America shortly afterwards, and edited a New York newspaper called
The Federalist. He died a poor man of
typhus fever in
Brooklyn, on 23 November 1818. ==References==