leader of the Methodist revival in Wales and its chief hymn writer.

His parents were Nonconformists, and he was educated at a Nonconformist academy at Llwyn-llwyd, near Hay. While there he was converted by the preaching of the religious reformer Howell Harris (1714–73) and in 1740 was ordained deacon; he became a curate, but because of his Methodist affinities he was finally refused priestly orders in 1743. Although he still considered himself an Anglican clergyman, he spent the rest of his life in evangelistic tours as a Methodist preacher and in writing hymns, religious poems, and prose treatises. After his marriage (c. 1748) he lived at Pantycelyn, near Llandovery, his mother's home, and became known as “Williams Pantycelyn.”

Williams has been called the first Welsh (Welsh literature) Romantic poet. In more than 800 hymns, published in booklets between 1744 and 1787, and in an “epic” poem, Bywyd a Marwolaeth Theomemphus, he interpreted the religious experience of the Methodist movement with sensitivity and intense feeling. Earlier Welsh poetic tradition was almost unknown to him, and his bare metre, burning sincerity of language, mystical reflection, and spiritual longing were new to Welsh poetry. Many of his prose works and pamphlets complement his hymns, but he was aware of contemporary secular studies in English, and some of his books were written to educate the Welsh in their own tongue and for his own use in teaching them to read. In Pantheologia (1762–c. 1799) he attempted a history of world religions. Many of his hymns remain in regular use, the best known in English being “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” in a considerably altered version.