J. W. Willis Bund

John William Bund Willis-Bund CBE JP (8 August 1843 – 7 June 1928) was a British historian and local Worcestershire politician.[1] Willis-Bund was born in 1843 at Wick Episcopi, Worcestershire, the son of John Walpole Willis and his second wifeAnn Susanna Kent Bund. The adoption of his mother's surname (in 1864)[2] was necessary in order to inherit from his maternal grandfather. He was educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1865 with first-class honours in Law.[3] He was also awarded an LL.B. (1865) and an M.A. (1868).[2] He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn.[1] In the course of his legal career he was appointed King's Counsel.[4] Willis-Bund was Professor of Constitutional Law and History at King's College London from 1869 to 1882, and Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol from 1877 to 1879.[2] Robert Thomas Jenkins noted that Willis-Bund wrote extensively about the history of the church in Wales but that some of his views were not generally held to be those of other academics writing in the field. Jenkins commented on his editing of the Black Book of St. Davids in 1902 for the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion: '...the work was but indifferently done', and mentioned another of Willis-Bund's books, The Celtic Church of Wales, 1897, which propounded a theory of his own and was, Jenkins states, judged by Louis Gougaud to be "dubious and prejudiced," and by Sir J. E. Lloyd to be "very haphazard".[1][5] Additionally, Gougaud observed that Willis-Bund's views (along with those of Rice Rees), were 'widely different' from 'those adopted by present-day historians on the relation of ancient Celtic Christianity to the See of Peter',[6] and Lloyd further stated that the work was a 'book of original, but highly disputable, views.'[7] The Church Quarterly Review, in summary at the end of its review of the volume, concluded: 'We have not refrained from pointing out what we think the weak points of Mr Willis Bund's book: but the book is far better than its weakest points'. The book was considered a 'detailed' 'study of the institutions of ancient Welsh Christianity'.[8] Willis-Bund was referred to by the Welsh politician Clement Edwards in a 1914 House of Commons debate on the Established Church in Wales as 'a great authority... one of the greatest authorities on the history of the old Welsh Church'. Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, however, in response, observed that Willis-Bund 'never got any support for the theory' in question, regarding the origins of tithing.[9] He served as chairman of the Worcestershire County Council, the Worcestershire Appeal Tribunal, and the Worcestershire National Relief Fund during the First World War. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours.[10] In 1927 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Law from the University of Birmingham.[11] He was appointed Vice-Lieutenant of the County of Worcester in November 1924. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.[2] On his death in 1928, it was stated in Country Life that "a finer old man, with a more dominating personality, than the late Mr. Willis Bund would be hard to find, even in this country".