Charles James Watkin Williams

Charles James Watkin Williams (23 September 1828 – 17 July 1884) was a Welsh judge, doctor and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1880.

Williams was the eldest son of Peter Williams, rector of Llansannan, Denbighshire, and his wife Lydia Sophia Price, daughter of the Rev. James Price of Plas-yn-Lysfaen, Denbighshire. Henry Wynn-Williams was his younger brother. After leaving Ruthin grammar school he studied medicine under John Eric Erichsen at University College Hospital, where he won the gold medal for comparative anatomy, and acted for a time as house-surgeon. He became the lifelong friend of Sir Henry Thompson and Sir John Russell Reynolds.

But he soon decided to abandon medicine for law. He spent a few terms at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated on 1 May 1851, but never graduated. In the same year (1851) he entered at the Middle Temple, and read in the chambers of Horatio Lloyd, known as a special pleader. When called to the bar three years later, he practised in the same branch of the profession, and in 1857 published An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Pleading in Civil Actions in the Supreme Courts of Law at Westminster. This work established his reputation and brought him large practice. It continued in use as the standard text-book for students at the Inns of Court till the passing of the Judicature Acts. In 1859 Williams was named ‘tubman’ of the Court of Exchequer.

He went first the home circuit, and afterwards the south-eastern. He took silk in 1873. He made a speciality of financial and mercantile cases, such as that of Anderson v. Morice in 1876. In Thomas v. The Queen, in which he had Sir John Holker, Sir Richard Baggallay, and Charles Synge Christopher Bowen against him, Williams vindicated the title of the subject to sue the crown for unliquidated damages resulting from breach of contract.

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