Edward Ellerker Williams

Edward Ellerker Williams (22 April 1793 – 8 July 1822) was a retired army officer who became a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the final months of his life and died with him.

Edward Williams was born in India, the son of an East India Company's army officer, John Williams. His family sent him to England where he attended Eton College, and then, at the age of 14, he entered the Royal Navy. His father died at sea in 1809, and with a comfortable settlement from the will, Williams joined the Eighth Light Dragoons of the East India Company's army in India as a cornet in 1811.

He served under his half-brother and was promoted to lieutenant in 1813. Williams's Sporting Sketches during a Short Stay in Hindustane contains drawings and journal descriptions of places and events during a leave of absence he took in 1814. The original copy of this notebook is in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. He remained with his regiment until 1817 and retired on half-pay on 28 May 1818. During his time in India he met and served with Thomas Medwin, the cousin of Shelley.

Williams returned to England, taking with him Jane Johnson, the wife of another army officer, née Cleveland (1798–1884), who told him her husband mistreated her and that she was justified in leaving him. Some time before September 1818, she began using the name Jane Williams, and hereafter they presented themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Williams.

In 1819 Thomas Medwin (left) returned to London and persuaded the Williamses to travel with him to Geneva, where they lived until September 1820. In February Jane and Edward's first child, Edward Medwin Williams (d.1897), was born. Williams also wrote an article on big game hunting for a Swiss encyclopaedia, Bibliotèque universelle des sciences, belles-lettres, et des arts.

Medwin left, and the Williamses moved first to Chalon and then to Italy, where they met with Medwin again in January 1821 in Pisa. Medwin introduced them to Shelley's circle, and Williams became a close companion of Shelley, writing a play under his tutelage, The Promise, or a Year, a Month and a Day, which he sent to Covent Garden, although it was rejected. The Williamses' second child, Jane Rosalind (d.1880), was born on 16 March.

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