Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Willis, William
WILLIS, WILLIAM (1835–1911), lawyer, born at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, on 29 April 1835, was eldest son and third child in the family of eight sons and six daughters of William Willis, a straw-hat manufacturer at Luton, by his wife Esther Kentish, daughter of Johnson Masters, of a Norfolk family, who carried on a straw-hat business at Dunstable. He received his early education at the free grammar school, Dunstable, then at schools at Hockcliffe, Bedfordshire, and at Hatfield, and lastly at Huddersfield College. He subsequently matriculated at London University, graduating B.A. in 1859, and LL.D., with gold medal, in 1865. After a short experience of business life in a drapery establishment in St. Paul's Churchyard Willis entered as a student at the Inner Temple on 21 April 1888, winning the studentship given by the Inns of Court; he was called to the bar on 6 June 1861. His success from the first was rapid; he had a sound and complete knowledge of the common law in all its branches, and he was endowed with a style of advocacy which rendered him singularly effective with juries. He took silk on 13 Feb. 1877, and was made a bencher of his Inn, 28 Jan. 1880. For the next twenty years he was one of the most conspicuous figures and determined fighters in the courts of law at Westminster and in the Strand. Of a fervid temperament and very voluble in speech, he would identify himself absolutely with the interests of his client, and assail his opponents with as much zeal and indignation as if his own honour and property were at stake. He came into frequent collision with both the bar and the bench, but nothing could daunt him. His services were greatly in demand in cases which required violent appeals to sentiment and emotion, and he could be forcible and convincing where the issue turned on points of law. Out of court his flow of conversation and his fondness for improving the occasion were the source of endless amusement to his brethren at the bar. A baptist by religion and a radical in politics, he advocated his principles in all companies. In 1903 he was chosen president of the baptist conference, a distinction rarely conferred upon a layman. In the general election of 1880 he was returned second on the poll as liberal member for Colchester, defeating the conservative candidate by a single vote. He took frequent part in the proceedings of the house, and on 31 March 1884 he succeeded in carrying a motion for the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords by a majority of eleven votes in spite of the opposition of Sir William Harcourt on behalf of the government. In the general election of Nov. 1885, Colchester having been deprived of its second member, he stood for Peckham, but was defeated, and had no better success there in July of the following year. In March 1897 he was given a county court judgeship by Lord Halsbury; in the discharge of his judicial duties he was easily led away by his feelings, which inclined towards the servant as against the mistress, the employee against the employer. He was at constant war with counsel, and the ‘scenes’ which were chronicled in the press left a poor impression of his sense of official decorum.
Though largely a self-educated man, Willis had a wide knowledge of English literature and especially of the classic writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He lectured on Milton and Bunyan with real eloquence. On 29 May 1902 he read publicly in the hall of the Inner Temple an imaginary ‘report of the trial of an issue in Westminster Hall, 20 June 1627,’ dealing with the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy; here he ably exposed the fallacies to which several learned lawyers had lent themselves on the Baconian side. In spite of his peculiarities Willis enjoyed much popularity at the bar; his closest friend being Sir John Day [q. v. Suppl. II]], as much his opposite in character and manner as he was in personal appearance.
Willis died at his residence at Blackheath on 22 Aug. 1911, after a prolonged illness, and was buried in Lee cemetery. He was twice married: (1) on 21 March 1866 to Annie, eldest daughter of John Outhwaite of Clapham, by whom he had issue four sons and five daughters; and (2) on 2 Sept. 1897 to Marie Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Moody, of Lewisham, who survived him.
Willis's works included: 1. ‘Milton's Sonnets,’ a lecture, privately printed, 1887. 2. ‘Sir George Jessel,’ a lecture, 1893. 3. ‘The Law of Negotiable Securities,’ six lectures delivered at the request of the Council of Legal Education, 1896. 4. ‘The Society and Fellowship of the Inner Temple,’ an address delivered in the Inner Temple Hall, 1897. 5. ‘Law relating to Contract of Sale of Goods,’ six lectures, 1902. 6. ‘The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy: a report of the trial of an issue in Westminster Hall, 20 June 1627,’ read in the Inner Temple Hall, 29 May 1902. 7. ‘The Baconian Mint: its Claims examined,’ 1903. 8. ‘The Baconian Mint: a Further Examination of its Claims,’ 1908. 9. ‘Recollections of Sir John C. F. Day, for Nineteen Years a Judge of the High Court,’ 1908. 10. ‘Cowper and his Connection with the Law,’ privately printed, Norwich, 1910.
[The Times, 23 Aug. 1911; Hansard, 3rd series, cclxxxvi. 502; personal knowledge and private information.]