(1849–1929).

Sheep farmer; member of Parliament, 1881–96; first president, New Zealand Farmers' Union, 1902–20; first president, Board of Agriculture, 1914–29.

A new biography of Wilson, James Glenny appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

James Glenny Wilson was born in Hawick in Scotland in 1849, scion of an old-established family of woollen manufacturers. His father, George Wilson, was the youngest of the 15 children of William Wilson, many of whom achieved more than local fame. One of them, James, was the founder of the Economist in 1843, and later became Minister of Finance in India under the Viceroy, Lord Canning.

George Wilson, a man of strong character and integrity, soon became wealthy; but, growing up in the period of economic stress following the Napoleonic Wars, he was grounded in Liberal traditions and in youth was an active and eloquent member of the Anti Corn Law League. In later life he acquired agrarian interests in Victoria and indirectly in New Zealand, and gave financial aid to his son, a young Conservative in the New Zealand Parliament. He married Jane Law, daughter of John Law, a handsome and vigorous preacher in the Teviot district who became known as “the Lion of Liddesdale”. James Glenny Wilson was the youngest of their four children.

James was educated at Bruce Castle School in London and, later, at the Edinburgh Institution, taking as well some arts lectures at the university. A misfit in the family business, he was sent as a cadet to a 700-acre farm, part of the estate of the Duke of Athol. Then, in his twenty-first year, in 1870, he went out to a large sheep station in western Victoria in which his father's firm had a financial interest. His position there as a part owner's young and inexperienced son was anomalous and, while he enjoyed a full and free social life and moved in Melbourne society, he felt he was “doing no good”. In 1873 he went on holiday to New Zealand and, after a general view of farming in Otago and Canterbury, he drew on his father to purchase an area of 6,200 acres north of the Sandon Small Farms Block. It was one of the last portions to be sold out of a block between the Rangitikei and Manawatu Rivers bought from the Maoris in 1866. Arranging for the purchase of stock and leaving a manager in charge, Wilson returned to Melbourne, where he married Annie Adams, daughter of Robert and Jane Adams, runholders in western Victoria. They returned to New Zealand to settle in 1874, built a house – “Lethenty” – in the village of Bulls as the property across the Rangitikei River was rather isolated, and there they remained for the rest of their lives, though “Lethenty” was rebuilt after the original home and much personal property were destroyed by fire in 1915.

Ngaio Station, as the run was named, was rather thin soil on clay, and in its native state was clothed with fern, tussock, toetoe, and manuka, with patches of useful bush in some gullies. Wilson was full of ideas but constitutionally not fit for heavy physical work; besides which he was irresistibly attracted to public life. He stocked the poor native pastures, such as they were, with the ewes of predominantly Merino blood that were still most common in the district, but with his father's help imported some Lincolns, and in later years experimented with Shropshires and other breeds. Disaster came almost at once with the bankruptcy of his father in 1875; the run had to be bought in from the creditors at a cost of £20,000 and refinanced. From that time, and especially in the eighties, till his father had re-established his business (which with remarkable ability he was able to do), Wilson was constantly in financial difficulties trying to make income do the work of capital in breaking in his large property, and bringing Ngaio from a state of nature to a state of grace. In his diary, on 25 April 1874, Wilson wrote: “How nice this place will look ten years hence, if it gets justice”. In a letter to her father-in-law, on 2 April 1887, Mrs Wilson wrote: “I have come to hate the very name of improvements”.

Fencing, ploughing, sowing turnips followed by grass seed – Wilson could never keep up with the work, and, as soon as one area was grassed, manuka seed carried in the sheep's fleeces caused more trouble. Prices were low. Topdressing and improved strains of pasture plants were still in the future, though in fact in 1890 Wilson did import basic slag – the first in New Zealand to do so. He exchanged information with farmers in other parts of the country, and a steady stream of advice and criticism from his father kept him abreast of British developments. From about 1900, when the sons had largely taken control and the burden of his mortgages had been reduced partly by bequests from his father and partly by the advantageous sale of sections on the margin of the run, things began to improve. Prices were at a higher level; prosperity was in sight. In 1881, in the midst of his struggles to improve his estate and to provide for his growing family, Wilson entered Parliament as member for the newly formed electorate of Foxton, and he retained the seat till he voluntarily retired in 1896. Thus he was in Parliament during a most interesting period of political change; but, though he spoke occasionally on such matters as land use, agricultural education, and forestry, and opposed Atkinson's Tariff Bill, he made little mark except as a conscientious local member eager to do what he could for the electors, whether friend or foe.

Out of Parliament, and with his sons now old enough to take a leading part in the management of Ngaio, Wilson found scope for his talents both locally in the county council and on the larger stage of the New Zealand Conference of Agricultural and Pastoral Associations where he gave leadership in relation to agricultural research and in rural education. He served on the Manawatu County Council from 1894–1925, most of the time as chairman, and for many years on the Palmerston North Hospital Board, the establishment of which he piloted through Parliament, and of which he was chairman at the time of his death. He was chairman of the private commission for the establishment of the Cawthron Institute. But the work that received widest public recognition was the establishment of the Farmers' Union, now Federated Farmers of New Zealand, of which he was the first president, an office he held from 1902 to 1920. Moreover, he gave energetic encouragement to education and research, and served as first president and, in effect, as chief executive officer of the Board of Agriculture established by the Massey Ministry in 1914. For his varied public services he was created Knight in 1915.

In private life Sir James Wilson and his wife presided over a home of culture and refinement where music, the arts, gardening, and nature study flourished. In his early years he was active in field sports, played cricket in 1881 for a Wanganui XXII that defeated the first Australian cricket team to visit New Zealand, and next year played for a Wellington XXII against A. Shaw's English team of professionals. He introduced polo to the Rangitikei and captained the team for many years, including 1894, when they won the Savile Cup. He played tennis at an age when most have given up athletic exercise.

Wilson's wife – Lady Wilson as she became in 1915 – was a lady of education, culture, and intelligence, and a writer whose prose and verse were published in England. She was her husband's constant inspiration and encouragement. They had three sons and two daughters. One son, Major R. A. Wilson, is widely known as farmer and naturalist. Miss Nancy Wilson was a Dominion leader in the Girl Guide movement.

Sir James Wilson died at Bulls on 3 May 1929.

by Leonard John Wild, C.B.E., M.A., B.SC.(HON.), D.SC., formerly Pro-Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Otaki.

• Early Rangitikei, Wilson, J. G. (1914)
• Life and Times of Sir James Wilson of Bulls, Wild, L. J. (1954).

(1900–59).

Architect.

A new biography of Wilson, Francis Gordon appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Francis Gordon Wilson was born on 27 November 1900 in Perth, Western Australia. He was educated in Wellington, New Zealand, at the Terrace School and at the Technical College. In 1916 he was articled to William Page, architect. He commenced his professional architectural studies in 1920 at Auckland University College, at the same time working for Hoggard, Prouse, and Gummer. He joined the firm of Gummer and Ford at its inception in 1922 and, in 1929, after being elected an associate of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in the previous year, was made an associate partner of the firm. In this position he became involved in such projects as the Remuera Library, the Wellington Public Library, the Auckland Railway Station, the National War Memorial Carillon, and the Dominion Museum and National Art Gallery.

In 1936 Wilson was appointed to the staff of the Public Works Department, where he held the positions consecutively of Housing Architect, Chief Housing Architect, Assistant Government Architect, and, finally, Government Architect. In 1932 he received special commendation for his entry in the R.I.B.A. Empire Victory Scholarship Competition and in 1948 was awarded the New Zealand Institute of Architects' Gold Medal for the design of the Dixon Street State Flats. The New Zealand Institute of Architects elected him a fellow in 1951, and in 1954 he was made an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He served on the National Historic Places Trust, the Town Planning Board, the Association of New Zealand Art Societies, the Architectural Centre Council, and the council and executive committee of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

In 1936 he married Virginia Smith and had three sons and two daughters. He died in Wellington on 23 February 1959.

Gordon Wilson's major contribution to New Zealand's architecture was in the field of coordination and administration; he recognised very early in his career the value of team work in the design and construction of buildings and he had the ideal personality to coordinate the various specialists into an efficient and enthusiastic working group. A sound designer himself, he insisted upon high-quality design in all his projects; indeed, it was this insistence which stimulated much of the keenness of his design teams.

He did not enter private practice on his own account but was always associated with others; first in a progressive private office, later in the State Housing Division, and, finally, as Government Architect. He joined the Housing Department at its inception and was largely responsible for its organisation and development as an important Department of State. His skill found greater scope on his appointment as Government Architect. In this capacity he was not only responsible for many buildings of national importance but he also became associated in his official capacity with many other important projects, such as development plans for universities, New Zealand House in London, and as an assessor of architectural competitions.

by William Hildebrand Alington, B.ARCH.(N.Z.), M.ARCH.(ILL.), Architect, Ministry of Works, Wellington and Cyril Roy Knight, M.A., BARCH. (LIVERPOOL), F.R.I.B.A., F.R.S.A., F.N.Z.I.A., Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland.

• Dominion, 24 Feb 1959 (Obit), 26 Feb 1959
• Auckland Star, 24 Feb 1959 (Obit)
• Wanganui Herald, 24 Feb 1959 (Obit)
• The Journal of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, Vol. 26 (Mar and Apr 1959).

(1815–75).

Printer, newspaper proprietor, politician.

A new biography of Williamson, John appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

John Williamson was born in Newry, Ireland, in 1815, where he was educated and learnt his trade as a printer. In 1840 he went to Sydney and, in the following year, to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland with his wife in the schooner Shamrock on 1 July 1841. He was engaged by the Auckland Printing Co., and, on 7 June 1845, founded the newspaper, The New Zealander, purchasing the plant from the Rev. H. H. Lawry. In 1848 he was joined by William Chisholm Wilson, who remained his partner until 1863.

In 1853 he entered politics as a member of the Auckland Provincial Council for the Pensioner Settlements, and he was Superintendent of the Province from 1856 to 1862, from 1867 to 1869, and from 1873 to 1875. In 1855 he was elected to the House of Representatives and remained a member until his death in 1875, representing the Pensioner Settlements until 1860, and the City of Auckland West from 1861 until 1875. He was Minister without portfolio during the Fox Ministry in 1861. He also held office as Waste Lands Commissioner, Crown Lands Commissioner, and Curator of Intestate Estates.

When he was appointed Superintendent in 1856 he found he could not work with his first council, so applied for a dissolution. He again stood, and was elected unopposed. During his first period as Superintendent the foundations were laid for many essential works and services, such as wharf accommodation and hospital accommodation. He was an ardent supporter of the provincial system and throughout his career he worked for its preservation. He was deeply interested in land settlement and introduced the 40-acre system, a scheme intended to encourage immigration, whereby every immigrant was entitled to 40 acres of waste land from the Crown. In 1862 he resigned as Superintendent owing to the attitude of the council to his land policy. He also did a great deal for the development of the Thames goldfields.

He held extreme views on native policy and was strongly opposed to the wars of the sixties, advocating peace. This unpopular attitude led to his newspaper, The New Zealander, having to cease publication in May 1866, with a heavy financial loss to himself. He died at Auckland on 16 February 1875.

Williamson always showed a single-minded devotion to the colony and in particular to the Province of Auckland. To a remarkable degree he was prepared to sacrifice personal ambition for the sake of his convictions and was influenced only by what seemed to him was for the good of the country. Not even the prospect of financial loss made him swerve from what he believed to be right. He has been described as “a man of strong will and great energy of character, yet with a most charitable and humane outlook”, and he has been considered by some to have been more of a statesman than were certain of his contemporaries who were popular political leaders.

by E.A.F.

• A History of Printing in New Zealand, 1830–1940, McKay, R. A. (ed.) 1940
• Early Conflicts of Press and Government, Meiklejohn, G. M., 1953
• Daily Southern Cross, 18 Feb 1875 (Obit)
• New Zealand Herald, 16, 17 Feb 1875 (Obit).

(1929– ).

Athlete.

Yvette Williams was born in Dunedin on 25 April 1929 and educated at Otago Girls' High School. After leaving school she worked in the Pharmaceutical Office of the Health Department and later as a bookkeeper. Between 1947 and 1954 she achieved an enviable record in athletic field events. She won the following New Zealand championships: shot put (1947 to 1954 inclusive); long jump (1948 to 1954 inclusive); javelin (1950); discus (1951 to 1954 inclusive); and 80 metres hurdles (1954). At the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland she won the gold medal for her long jump (19 ft 4 ½ in.) – a new games record – and also took the silver medal in the javelin event. She represented New Zealand at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, where she won the long jump, setting a new Olympic record of 20 ft 5 ½ in. In 1954, at the Empire Games in Vancouver, she came sixth in the final of the 80 metres hurdles, won the shot put with a record distance of 45 ft 9 ½ in., and won the discus event with a throw of 147 ft 8 in. On 20 February 1954 at Gisborne she established a new world record for the long jump with a distance of 20 ft 7 ½ in. She was awarded the M.B.E. in 1953.

(1800–78).

First Bishop of Waiapu.

A new biography of Williams, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Williams was born on 18 July 1800 at Nottingham, the fourth son of Thomas Williams, a lace manufacturer, and of Mary, a daughter of Captain Henry Marsh, R.N. He was educated at Southwell Grammar School and apprenticed to a surgeon. Before long he decided to join his elder brother, Henry, in the mission field; however, he was obliged to complete his apprenticeship before going on to Oxford (1822), where he took his B.A. in classics. On 19 December 1824 he was ordained priest and, while waiting for a ship to take him to New Zealand, spent some time gaining experience in London hospitals. He arrived at Paihia on 25 March 1826 and spent the next eight years in charge of the mission school. As he had received some training as a philologist, one of his first tasks was to study the structure of the Maori language. In this connection he compiled a Dictionary of the New Zealand Language and a Concise Grammar which was published in 1844 and, later, revised by Maunsell and W. L. Williams.

When it was decided to expand the work of the mission, Williams offered to open the new stations at Thames and Mangapouri. In 1833 he visited the East Coast – Poverty Bay area, where he established native teachers. Five years later, accompanied by Colenso, Matthews, and Stack, he revisited these districts which he now judged to be ready for a permanent mission station. In April 1839 Williams and Taylor visited the districts once more and selected a site. The following year he brought his family to Turanga (Gisborne) and took charge of a parish extending from East Cape to Cape Palliser. In 1837 Williams published his translation of The New Testament. When Selwyn arrived in 1842, Williams was appointed chairman of the revising committee to prepare a new translation for the British and Foreign Bible Society. In 1843 Selwyn constituted Williams Archdeacon of Waiapu. Early in 1851 Williams was sent to England to protest to the parent committee of the Church Missionary Society against their acceptance of the allegation by Sir George Grey that the missionaries' land claims had provided Heke with his pretext for making war and, also, to vindicate Henry Williams. Though he did not secure his brother's immediate reinstatement, he was able to convince the Church Missionary Society authorities that Grey had misrepresented the situation.

Williams returned to Turanga in 1853, where he devoted much of his time to his literary interests. He also superintended the removal of the mission to Waerenga-a-Hika in 1857. In April 1859 Selwyn constituted the eastern portion of his diocese into a separate missionary diocese – named Waiapu – and consecrated Williams as its first Bishop. From 1859 until 1865 Williams maintained his diocesan headquarters at Waerenga-a-Hika, but the Hauhau invasion of the latter year led him eventually to move to Napier. In 1867 he published Christianity Among the New Zealanders, a historical account of Church Missionary Society endeavours in New Zealand. On 25 March 1876 Williams suffered a severe stroke and, shortly afterwards, resigned his See. He died at Napier on 9 February 1878 leaving two sons and six daughters.

On 11 July 1825, at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, Williams married Jane, daughter of James Nelson. One of his sons, William Leonard Williams, became the third Bishop of Waiapu (1895–1909), while a grandson, Herbert William Williams, was the sixth Bishop of Waiapu (1930–37).

William Williams was a strong evangelical. His character contrasted greatly with that of his brother. Henry was very much a man of action, but William was gentle and scholarly.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Through Ninety Years, 1826–1916, Williams, F. W. (n.d.)
• Waiapu – the Story of a Diocese, Rosevear, W. J. W. (1960).

(1837–1915).

Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

A new biography of Williams, Joshua Strange appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Joshua Strange Williams was born in London in 1837, the son of Joshua Williams, Q.C. He attended Harrow School under Dr Vaughan, and went on to a brilliant academic career at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was second in the first-class law tripos in 1858, and junior optime in the mathematical tripos and Chancellor's gold medallist in legal studies in 1859. After graduating B.A. he read law in Lincoln's Inn with his father, and was called to the Bar in November 1859. He then took his M.A. and M.L. at Cambridge, but his health broke down and he was advised to seek a change of climate. Sailing from England in the emigrant ship Derwentwater in July 1861, he arrived in Otago at the height of the gold rush there. Young Williams made his way to Christchurch and was admitted to the New Zealand Bar by Mr Justice H. B. Gresson, entering into partnership in May 1862 with T. S. Duncan. Williams joined the Provincial Government in October 1862 as member for Heathcote and in the following year succeeded his partner as provincial solicitor. A year later he resigned and returned to England where he married Caroline Helen, daughter of Thomas Sanctuary, of Horsham, Sussex. He arrived back in New Zealand in 1865 and was returned to the Provincial Government for his old constituency of Heathcote. In a quiet, competent way Williams exerted a substantial influence on provincial affairs and proved a remarkably sagacious adviser, a characteristic which served him well, when, after the provincial dissolution of 1870, he became District Land Registrar for Canterbury and, later, Registrar-General of Lands. His work in this sphere was represented by an authoritative and widely acknowledged treatise on the Land Transfer Act.

Joshua Williams's career on the Supreme Court Bench began when he succeeded Mr Justice H. S. Chapman as resident Judge for Otago in 1875. He held this office with great distinction for 39 years, during which he built up for himself an uncommonly high reputation for the soundness of his law. He presided at many famous trials and directed the long course of the Colonial Bank Inquiry of 1897. His judgments were notable for the choice and simple English in which they were couched and the lucidity of their reasoning. When the Arbitration Court was established in 1895 he was appointed its first President because it was essential that the Court should be developed from the outset on the soundest legal principles. After three years he returned to the Supreme Court Bench. He was knighted in 1911 and in 1914 achieved the proud distinction of becoming New Zealand's first permanent resident representative on the Privy Council in London. His tenure of office was brief, but even among the Law Lords of his day he was recognised as a master of sound judgment and scholarly opinion. He died in London on 22 December 1915 and was survived for 25 years by his second wife, Amelia Durant, daughter of John Wesley Jago, of Dunedin, whom he married a few years after the death of his first wife in Christchurch in 1872.

Sir Joshua Williams's greatest virtue was his mastery of principle and command of instances, which, added to a highly developed faculty of reducing multifarious facts and perplexed argument to a rational order, and singling out a decisive point, earned him his reputation for soundness. To everything related to his office he brought an exquisite kindliness that produced a type of man sorely needed in a prosaic, machine-driven age. A profound lawyer, and a master of English, as well as of French and Italian, Williams in judgment revealed himself as a scholar, a lawyer, and a dialectician. He believed that mercy should temper justice, but appreciated also that in all dealings with wrongdoing, justice should not leave mercy to work alone. His industry was tireless and throughout his long career he exhibited exemplary diligence in the discharge of any duty which he considered to be consistent with the dignity of his office. Not for him was the isolation that is the destiny, and frequently the inclination, of many of those who are set above their fellows. He had a positive genius for fostering and maintaining the happiest relations with everyone, and understood perfectly how to content the great and encourage the humble. One of his principal extra-judicial interests was the University of Otago, of which he was Vice-Chancellor in 1879 and Chancellor from 1894 to 1909. Here again he displayed his customary tact and delicacy of feeling in his dealings with others to the undoubted advantage of the University and its work.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.

• Random Recollections, Hanlon, A. C. (1939)
• Otago Daily Times, 29 Dec 1915 (Obit).

(1782–1867).

Pioneer missionary.

A new biography of Williams, Henry appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Henry Williams, leader for many years of the Church of England mission to New Zealand, was the third son of Thomas Williams, a Welshman of good family who had come to live at Nottingham. Henry was born there on 11 February 1782. In 1806 he entered the Navy as a midshipman and, in that same year, took part in the action at Copenhagen when the Danish fleet was seized. Among other subsequent engagements he fought on board the Endymion in her action against the American warship President. When the latter was forced to surrender, Williams was a member of the small prize crew which sailed the badly damaged vessel to port, after riding out a storm and quelling a mutiny of the American prisoners. When peace came, in 1815, he retired on half pay. Three years later he married Marianne Coldham, sister-in-law of Edward Marsh, an influential member of the Church Missionary Society, who inspired him to become a missionary. He had at first intended to work as a lay missionary, but the society were anxious that he should be ordained. After complying with their wishes he sailed for Sydney, in June 1822, on the Lord Sidmouth, a convict ship carrying female prisoners whose practice of singing obscene songs the young missionary succeeded in getting forbidden, in spite of a suspicious apathy on the part of the ship's captain.

At Sydney, Williams met Samuel Marsden, and later accompanied the famous missionary on his fourth visit to New Zealand in 1823. The fortunes of the mission, first planted in the Bay of Islands in 1814, were now at a low ebb, partly at least for lack of a capable leader – a deficiency that was at once made good when Williams settled at Paihia and took charge of affairs. Firearms were in great demand among the Maoris who, much to the mission's embarrassment, could not easily be persuaded to accept any other commodity in exchange for their produce. In spite of Marsden's protests, the missionaries had occasionally given way to the temptation of trading muskets for provisions, but from the first Williams insisted that the practice should cease. Intertribal warfare, made infinitely more deadly by the possession of firearms, was a perennial scourge of the Maori people. Because its prevalence militated against the spread of Christianity, Williams laboured to preserve the peace, and risked his life many a time by interposing himself between forces about to join battle and insisting that he be allowed to act as mediator.

Progress was slow for the first 10 years. Rejecting Marsden's view that the Maoris should be educated and civilised as a preliminary to conversion, Williams held that conversion should come first. He always refused, however, to accept converts for baptism until fully convinced that they were genuine. Several new mission stations established in the early 1830s had some initial success, but were soon extinguished by roving bands engaged in intertribal warfare. Not until the years 1838 and 1839 did Williams succeed in planting stations that were to become permanent at Tauranga, the East Cape, and Otaki.

He regarded with rising dismay the influx of his countrymen that was taking place at this time, mainly in the far northern districts of New Zealand. Many of these people were by no means the flower of their race, and he feared that their example of loose living would undo much of the mission's work. Foreseeing, too, that their land speculations, entered into on a fantastic scale and with little regard for equity, would entail dangerous complications, he hoped for some form of intervention by the British Government. The operations of the New Zealand Company roused his immediate antagonism, and when Captain Hobson arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1840 as representative of the British Crown, Williams used all his unique influence with the Maoris in persuading them to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.

New Zealand having thus become a British colony, Williams almost unavoidably became an indispensable intermediary between the Maoris and the newly established Government. In that capacity he displayed a concern for native interests that made him distrusted by some of his countrymen. By the time that he had been created an archdeacon in September 1844 events were in train for the outbreak of Heke's war, and Williams had had thrust upon him the incompatible dual role of pacifier of the insurgent Maoris and intelligence agent to His Majesty's forces. At the sack of Kororareka, he stayed in the town almost until it went up in flames, restraining the Maoris from pillage and helping the settlers who were being embarked from the beach to save some remnant of their goods. As the war proceeded, the dilemma in which Williams and other missionaries found themselves grew more acute. “How can we excuse ourselves to the natives when thus incorporated with the military?” he demanded. He had already been called a traitor by a British naval officer when Captain Grey replaced Captain FitzRoy as Governor. FitzRoy had been Williams's firm friend, but Grey lost no time in implying, by subtle inference, that the missionary had indeed been involved in treasonable correspondence with the rebels.

The archdeacon's reputation survived these slanderous insinuations, but the latter part of his life was embittered by a controversy that embroiled him with both civil and ecclesiastical authority. Many of the Church of England missionaries had large families for whose future some provision had to be made. Since the New Zealand of the 1830s held out little prospect for male children of employment in one of the trades or a career in one of the professions, the obvious course was to settle young men on the land. The Church Missionary Society, however, declined to give a ruling as to the extent of land that might be purchased, and the missionaries, bound by no defined limit, bought, in some cases, extensively. When British sovereignty was declared, Williams claimed to have bought 11,000 acres from the Maoris, for the whole of which he eventually received a Crown grant in 1844. Unlike FitzRoy, Grey, the new Governor, deplored such transactions and in 1846 he informed the Colonial Secretary that “a large expenditure of British blood and money” would be needed to put the large land buyers in possession of their purchases. His statement received publicity with the result that Bishop Selwyn, with full approval from the society, appealed to all missionaries who, like Williams, had bought land in excess of the officially fixed limit of 2,560 acres, to forgo their claims to the overplus. Williams had already informed the society that he was prepared to transfer all his land to his family and keep none for himself, but he was infuriated by Grey's insinuation, since repeated, that the land had been acquired from unwilling and uncomprehending vendors. Having rejected Selwyn's appeal, he obstinately refused a subsequent request from the same quarter to surrender his title deeds unconditionally. The society objected so strongly to his conduct that he was dismissed from its service 27 years after having landed in the Bay of Islands. Though reinstated in 1855, Williams still smarted under a sense of injustice, and the last years of his life were darkened by the Maori War and its harmful repercussions on the missionaries' work. He died on 16 July 1867 at Pakaraka, Bay of Islands. On the following day two warring hapus of the Ngapuhi were on the point of joining battle when news of his death reached them. The Maoris were so deeply grieved and shocked that they dispersed peacefully.

The most successful period of Henry William's career was that during which he exercised more or less absolute control over the Church of England mission from 1823 to 1840 when its influence was extended far and wide throughout the North Island. Courageous, masterful, and energetic, he was born to command rather than cooperate. Combative by temperament, he was vehement in dispute and seldom willing to accept a compromise. As a low churchman or evangelical, he looked askance at the Oxford movement and feared that Bishop Selwyn, whom he believed to be a “Puseyite”, might exert an unfortunate influence in his diocese. In matters of doctrine Williams was inclined to bigotry. His attitude towards strange manners and customs was both insular and puritanical. “I feel it necessary,” he wrote, “to prohibit all old (Maori) customs; their dances, singing and tatu-ing, their general domestic disorders.” Politics were certainly not his element, but he had the misfortune to become involved in them through causes beyond his control. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, with whom he had much in common, he was not subservient to secular rulers, nor did he invariably treat ecclesiastical superiors with due deference.

by Randall Mathews Burdon, M.C. (1896–1965), Author, Wellington.

• The Life of Henry Williams, Carleton, H. (1874)
• Marsden's Lieutenants, Elder, J. R. (1934)
• Sir George Grey, K.C.B., Rutherford, J. (1961)
• The Early Journals of Henry Williams, 1826–40, Rogers, L. M. (1961).

(1876–1928).

Journalist and linguist, foreign editor of The Times.

Harold Williams, the son of the Rev. W. J. Williams, was born at Auckland on 6 April 1876. Because his father, who was president of the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Church and editor of the Methodist Times, was constantly on the move, his schooling was haphazard, but from his early years Harold Williams absorbed languages with the ease of a genius. As a boy he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and most of the European and Pacific island languages. In 1888 he won a scholarship which took him to the Christchurch Boys' High School; in 1892, while attending the Timaru Boys' High School, he gained a Junior National Scholarship. When the family returned to Auckland, in 1893, he sat for his B.A. degree but, for all his brilliance, he was failed in mathematics, a subject he never mastered. At the age of 20, despite a slight speech defect which made public speaking distasteful to him, he entered the Methodist Ministry and, until he sailed for Germany in 1900, with little more than a present of £50 as his sole fortune, he served his church at St. Albans, Stratford, and on the Wairoa gumfields, where he increased his knowledge of foreign languages by talking with kauri-gum diggers. After three years at Munich University he was appointed to the staff of The Times and stationed at Stuttgart, where he met and married Ariadna Tyrkova, first woman to be elected to the Russian Duma. In 1905 Williams went to Russia and remained there for 14 years, representing The Times, Manchester Guardian, Morning Post, Daily Chronicle, and New York newspapers, and collecting immense quantities of material which bore fruit as his authoritative book, Russia of the Russians.

Williams' political perception was remarkable. In recording the 1905 revolution he saw in it and its aftermath the genesis of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. That was only one of his many prophetic warnings. When war came in 1914, Williams reported its progress and effect with such discernment and clarity that diplomats often came to him for advice. He returned to London in 1918 and, after a bleak period, joined the staff of The Times in 1921 under Wickham Steed. There he became foreign editor and director of the Foreign Department, the only New Zealander ever to hold that exacting post. He was still in office when he died on 18 November 1928, loved by all with whom he worked. Harold Williams spoke 58 languages fluently and many dialects. He was the only man to attend the League of Nations in Geneva and talk with every delegate in his own language; he read the Bible in 26 languages, including Hausa, Zulu, and Swahili. He read grammars all his life as other people read detective stories. From 1919 to 1928 Williams exercised a notable influence over European and American political thought, and his leading articles were quoted in debate by world politicians. He strongly supported the League of Nations, though the inadequacy, presumption, and intrigue of many of the delegates depressed him. He had an amazing capacity for friendship and remained an unassuming, practising Christian all his life. When he died, The Times, in a glowing tribute, said that modesty was his only fault.

by Oliver Arthur Gillespie, M.B.E., M.M. (1895–1960), Author.

• Cheerful Giver, Williams, Ariadna Tyrkova (1935)
• The Times (London), 19 Nov 1928.

(1906–39).

Poetess and novelist.

A new biography of Hyde, Robin appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Robin Hyde's family background suggests something of the adventurous line her own life was to take: her father, George Wilkinson, born in India, was a youthful volunteer in the Boer War; later in South Africa he met and married an Australian nurse. Robin Hyde was born in Cape Town on 19 January 1906; in the same year her parents came to Wellington where she grew up with her three sisters while her father served in another war. At Wellington Girls' College she very early developed a passionate interest in poetry and won many literary prizes; at the age of 17 she commenced her literary career in the newspaper office of the Dominion.

Almost at once a serious illness struck at the pretty, intense young girl: rheumatic fever caused a permanent lameness, and left her a prey to the insomnia and mental disturbance that were to recur at intervals until her death. Most courageously she persisted in her effort to build an independent career in journalism, working as a parliamentary reporter in Wellington, then in general reporting on the Christchurch Sun, the Wanganui Chronicle, and finally the Auckland Observer until 1933. During this period she wrote her first book of verse The Desolate Star (1929) and her first collection of prose impressions Journalese (1934), both of which were published in New Zealand.

These were depression years: the strain of earning a living under tough competitive conditions, complicated by the demands of her own emotional temperament, a touch of defiant Bohemianism, and the prevailing currents of social and private revolt, led to a serious nervous collapse. Robin Hyde rallied from this, and the last five years of her life saw an astonishing output both of prose and of verse. Two volumes of poems The Conquerors (1935) and Persephone in Winter (1937) were published in England, as were all her later books. Her first real public success came with Passport to Hell (1936), a remarkable tour de force in which the authentic experiences of a New Zealand soldier in the First World War are imaginatively retold with enormous brio as the adventures of “Starkie”. A sequel to this book, Nor the Years Condemn (1938) follows Starkie into the bitter years of l'entre deux guerres leading to the rise of the first Labour Government. Both these documentary novels contain vivid compassionate reporting of a decisive era in New Zealand history; as literature of social protest they owe something to the manner of John A. Lee.

Check to Your King (1936) is a lively reconstruction of a picturesque interlude in early New Zealand history, the adventures of Charles, Baron de Thierry – it is a gay and sparkling book, and its success encouraged Robin Hyde to embark on purely imaginative fiction. Wednesday's Children (1937) is a somewhat disconcerting novel in its blend of feminism and fantasy, but the central character and situation – a woman of warm sympathies living on an island in Auckland harbour with a brood of dream children by an exotic series of lovers – has obvious relation to a pivotal experience in the author's life, the birth of her own child in defiance of social convention. Her last novel The Godwits Fly (1938) begins as a straightforward family chronicle based on her early life in Wellington; its earlier chapters contain some brilliantly evocative atmospheric writing.

Robin Hyde saw New Zealanders as godwits who “must make the long migration, under a compulsion they hardly understand; or else be dissatisfied all their lives long”. Early in 1938 she gathered up the scanty savings she had made from her writing and left for England, intending to travel across Siberia. On the way to Hong Kong she fell in love with China and was sidetracked, as a devoted but ill-paid correspondent, into the middle of China's war. Overrun by the Japanese armies after the battle of Hsüchow she was arrested as a spy, roughly handled by Japanese troops, and eventually succeeded in making her way out through Tsingtao. Wretchedly ill, she reached England in the month of Münich: here she wrote in six weeks Dragon Rampant (1939), her account of travels in wartime China, and worked on her last poems. In and out of hospital, struggling with a stage version of Wednesday's Children, and still hoping to return to China, she could not sustain the mounting pressure of public and personal crises and on 23 August 1939 she took her own life. She was buried in Kensington New Cemetery, Gunnersbury.

Robin Hyde was a romantic rebel who attempted to live her own myth in unromantic times. Against greater odds than those that had faced Katherine Mansfield before her, she made her revolt, asserted her independence as woman and as writer, and struggled to escape from the “colonial dilemma”. Much of her work is marred by romantic extravagance, but she was learning all the time to control the faults of her earlier writing, to gain precision and perspective. When the last of her poems were printed in the posthumous volume Houses by the Sea (1952), edited with a memoir by her friend Gloria Rawlinson, the book made an immediate appeal to a younger generation of writers. The New Zealand poems with their glimpses of houses and people, their strong sense of place and feeling for daily living, did much to help fill in the hitherto empty landscape; while the war poems from China added a new dimension both to Robin Hyde's own work, and to New Zealand poetry as a whole.

by James Munro Bertram, M.A.(N.Z., OXON.), Associate Professor of English, Victoria University of Wellington.

• Landfall, Vol. 7, Sep 1953
• New Zealand Libraries, Vol. 10.

(1820–86).

Runholder, provincial politician, and businessman.

Robert Wilkin was born at Tinwald Downs, Dumfriesshire, on 14 January 1820, the son of a farmer, James Wilkin (1792–1870); his mother was Rachel Douglas, née Laurie, daughter of the parish minister. He spent seven years at Dumfries Academy and went on to Edinburgh University. At the age of 19 he sailed for Melbourne in the Midlothian and spent the next 19 years moving about Australia and gaining a wide experience of grazing, both as a manager and as an owner of sheep stations. For a time he acted as Magistrate at Port Phillip. On 25 July 1858 he and his wife and two children and a brother arrived at Lyttelton by the brig Dart. He bought the well-known property, later called Avonbank, from its first owner, William Tod, and a small part of it remained in the possession of his family for many years.

Wilkin had an interest in various Canterbury properties mostly in association with Robert Heaton Rhodes, of which the most important was St. Leonards. They owned jointly a small run named Carleton and they were joint mortgagees of Racecourse Hill, which they sold to the Maxwells and Benjamin Booth in 1868. In 1863 the Rhodes Brothers and Wilkin bought St. Leonards from George Duppa. This splendid property was bounded on the south by the Hurunui River, on the north by the Waiau, and on the east by Cheviot Hills. The western boundary ran through the middle of the Amuri Plains. With an area of 90,000 acres, it was all clean grazing country clear of scrub and fern and was at least as good as Cheviot Hills; the price was believed to be £150,000. The partners subdivided it into eight sections, each of which was a fair-sized station, and the sale was held in 1877 when the land boom of the late seventies was nearing its peak. The result must have been highly profitable to the partners; Wilkin was believed to have held a quarter share. His biggest speculation was the purchase of Lake Wanaka Station which he and William Thompson, Provincial Auditor, bought in 1859; they stocked it with 6,000 sheep from Cheviot Hills; they sold the Mount Pisa block to R. J. Loughnan and Lake Wanaka Station itself to Robert Campbell, of Otekaieke, North Otago, for £65,000.

In about 1871 Wilkin started business in Christchurch as a grain and seed merchant and general agent; he also dealt in wool and skins and was the first man to hold a local wool sale; C. C. Aikman was the auctioneer. He was well known for his shrewdness and integrity and this put him in a good position to make sales for his friends; for example, he sold Seadown on behalf of the Rhodes brothers.

Wilkin was elected a member for Timaru for the Provincial Council in 1860 and was re-elected next year. Although he never lived there, he got things done for his constituency; he had Timaru divided into four electorates and he obtained a handsome grant from the Provincial Council for the Timaru Mechanics' Institute and Library. He was elected member for Waitangi in 1864. He was a strong supporter of Moorhouse; on his retirement he supported Bealey, who might be considered Moorhouse's nominee. Wilkin himself had been put forward for the superintendency, but declined. He was head of the Executive until he retired from the Council in 1866. He represented Kaiapoi in Parliament from 1863 to 1866.

Always active in the organisation of agricultural shows, Wilkin judged the Merino show held at Shepherd's Bush in 1859 and a similar one held the next year near the site of Ashburton. He presided over a meeting held in Christchurch in 1862, at which it was decided to hold a show there in that year; this was the forerunner of the long series of Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Shows. He was chairman again at a meeting held in January 1863 at which the Canterbury A. and P. Association really got under way, and he was elected the first president. A subcommittee was deputed to find a suitable site for a showground and it picked a 14-acre block in Colombo Street, later better known as Sydenham Park. Wilkin gave a prize for the best sheepdog (won by Caverhill) and won a prize for the best yearling thoroughbred stallion. The highlights were thoroughbreds and Clydesdales. But the show was spoilt by rain; the exhibits were too scattered and the accommodation was poor. Finally, to cap it all, for some unknown reason the Lyttelton Times reporter was ordered off the ground. The Christchurch show later moved to a bigger and better ground at Addington, where it continued to have an undisputed claim to be the leading show in New Zealand.

Wilkin was chairman of the Middle Island Association in 1865; its aim was to protect the interests of the Middle Island by political separation or other means. Meanwhile, he raced a few horses and took a considerable part in the administration of racing, being a member of the committee of the Canterbury Jockey Club for years and also a member of the handicapping committee, a position which could only be held by a man of absolute integrity and one completely trusted by owners of horses.

In 1869 and 1870 Wilkin was organiser and manager of the Canterbury Meat Export Co. As a further interest, Wilkin undertook the editing of the Shorthorn Herd Book, which had been started by Colonel G. S. Whitmore and carried on by J. G. Bluett. This was a labour of love for Wilkin; he began by listing the cows landed by W. B. Rhodes at Akaroa in 1839 and gave in detail the pedigrees of 45 bulls and 122 cows. The book was not confined to Shorthorns. By his motion the Canterbury A. and P. Association undertook to publish the New Zealand Country Journal quarterly, which included such contributions as “Out in the Open”, by T. H. Potts.

For five years after Wilkin's first year as president, George Gould was in the chair; but he was a man of poor health, and in his absence Wilkin always presided. Before Wilkin left on a trip to England in May 1878 he was entertained at a dinner attended by 150 of the leading men of Canterbury, and there was no doubt of the warmth of feeling for him; £391 was subscribed, part of which was to pay for a portrait. Sir John Hall proposed the toast of the evening and said, “We might well ask what public institution there is to which Mr Wilkin was not willing to lend a helping hand, what movement did not receive his cheerful aid”.

Wilkin was also the originator of the idea of a ram fair to be held on the show grounds, and he called a meeting of those interested in January 1873. This immediately took its place as an institution of the utmost value to breeders and farmers. He was an original director of the Canterbury Saleyards Co. (Addington Yards). He read a paper on grasses before the A. and P. Association, which, considering it was composed in 1876, showed that he was a shrewd and observant farmer; his remarks on various grasses are even now remarkably up to date. He took a great interest in acclimatisation and presented some black swans to the Canterbury society; he also introduced hedgehogs. He imported five English Leicester rams, bred by Thomas Wilkin of Tinwald Downs, Dumfriesshire (his brother); he also imported the American trotting stallion Berlin, sire of Prickwillow. He was one of the founders of the Middle Park Stud and was appointed a director of the New Zealand Shipping Co. in 1881. He was a member of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College, 1875–76. The Canterbury township of Tinwald, just south of Ashburton, took its name from him; Wilkin and Carter had a training stable there; there is still a Wilkin Street in Tinwald.

Robert Wilkin was a man of few words, steady, reliable, and of the highest integrity, who inspired trust and affection. Crosbie Ward has left us a vivid sketch of Wilkin, whom he describes as “a portly-built man, a Scot by birth. He often seconds the motions of his colleagues, but nothing more laconic can be conceived than his manner of doing it. He catches hold of the table, drags himself into a half-erect position, nods to the Speaker and subsides in his seat. He is not without brains, however, as may be inferred from the few remarks he makes when tortured into utterance”. Although Wilkin's career appeared outwardly prosperous, he lost money, and at the time of his death, his estate was embarrassed. The bank immediately seized his assets and put the goodwill of his business up to auction; it was bought by F. C. Tabart. The partners in the firm were, besides Wilkin, Walter James Oliver, James Wilkin (son), and E. B. Cox (son-in-law).

In 1850 in Queensland, Australia, Wilkin married Agnes Johnston Barker (1832–1913), by whom he had four sons and one daughter. He died at Fendalton, Christchurch, on 20 June 1886.

by George Ranald Macdonald, Retired Farmer, Kaiapoi R.D.

• Men of Mark in New Zealand, Cox, A. (1886)
• Early Canterbury Runs, Acland, L. G. D. (1951)
• George Rhodes of the Levels and His Brothers, Woodhouse, A. E. (1937).