Having made the acquaintance of Archbishop Bancroft, he obtained access to the King, who took particular notice of him, and when he entered Holy Orders he obtained one preferment after another. In 1617 he was made a prebendary of Lincoln, Peterborough, Hereford, and S. David’s, in addition to a rectory in Northamptonshire and a sinecure in North Wales. He was also chaplain to the King, and had to receive and entertain that eccentric man Marco Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, who had quarrelled with the Pope and came to England. In 1619, not satisfied with all his preferments, he obtained the deanery of Salisbury, and the year following, that of Westminster. In 1621 he was made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and was raised to the bishopric of Lincoln, which he held along with the deanery of Winchester and his Northamptonshire rectory. On the death of James I., whom he attended at the last, he fell out with the Duke of Buckingham, and Charles I. took the Great Seal from him in 1626. Afterwards, on some charges brought against him in the Star Chamber, he was fined ten thousand pounds, suspended from all his functions, dignities, and emoluments, and sent to prison in the Tower for three years and a half. The King was, however, soon reconciled to him, cancelled all orders that had been made against him, and in 1641 he was advanced to the archbishopric of York. When war broke out between the King and the Parliament, he took the side of the former, and had to fly from York, as the younger Hotham was marching on York, and had sworn to capture and kill him for having commented strongly on the manner in which Sir John Hotham had seized on the King’s magazine of arms at Hull. Archbishop Williams hasted to Conway and fortified the castle for the King, and Charles, by letter from Oxford, “heartily desired him to go on with the work, assuring him that whatever moneys he should lay out upon the fortification of the said castle should be repaid him before the custody thereof should be put into any other hand than his own.” The good people of Conway town placed all their valuables in the castle for security. [Illustration: PLAS MAWR, CONWAY] In 1645 Sir John Owen, a colonel in the King’s army, obtained from Prince Rupert the appointment to the command of the castle. This the archbishop angrily resented, as the King had assured the governorship to him till the money he had dispensed should be repaid. Charles could not raise the requisite sum, and the castle was too important not to be placed under a soldier instead of a churchman. He accordingly went over to the side of the Parliament, and with the assistance of Colonel Mytton, the Parliamentarian officer, forced the gates and secured that stronghold for the faction against which he had hitherto contended. Williams, in fact, had been keen-sighted enough to see that the King’s affairs were falling into ruin in all quarters, and he characteristically joined the winning side.