ABSTRACT
Thomas Williams was the son of a Welsh curate, who, on a very small stipend, had brought up a very large family, in decent and industrious cleanliness. Without aspiring above his situation, his utmost ambition was satisfied in beholding his children neatly dressed on a sunday, whilst for the rest of the week they made the same appearance, and worked as hard as any cottagers in the parish; and thus might the whole family have vegetated on their own soil, till they had fulfilled the measure of their days, and sunk into an honest and peaceful obscurity, if the younger son had not been employed in his leisure hours, after the duties of the free-school were over, to weed in the / garden of ’Squire Howell (an eccentric and benevolent man of good fortune) who had frequently honored Tom with his notice, and rewarded the quickness of his replies with an additional sixpence: when it happening to fall in the lad’s way to rescue a favourite grey-hound from the danger of drowning, the ’Squire declared he would make a man of him; and, Thomas having completed his probation at the free-school, he entered him, in his sixteenth year, a commoner at Oxford, with an allowance of one hundred pounds per annum for his maintenance there.
