ill-willer

ill-willer (plural ill-willers)

1. (obsolete) One who harbours ill will.
   • 1598, Robert Tofte, “A most excellent patheticall, and passionate Letter of Duke D’Epernoun, Minion, unto Henry the third, King of France and Polonia” in Alba, The Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover, edited by Alexander B. Grosart, 1880, p. 136,

     These are the wordes (worthie Prince) wherewith you have pricked forwardes the violence of my malicious ill willers […]

   • 1628, Francis Fletcher et al., The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, London: Nicholas Bourne, 1652, p. 30,

     Proofs were required and alleadged, so many, and so evident, that the Gentleman himself, stricken with remorse of his inconsiderate and unkind dealing, acknowledged himself to have deserved death, yea many deaths; for that he conspired, not only the overthrow of the action, but of the principall Actor also, who was not a stranger or ill-willer, but a deare and true friend unto him […]

   • 1736, Benjamin Franklin, Preface, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1736, in The Prefaces, Proverbs and Poems of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Paul Leicester Ford, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889, p. 58,

     These ill-willers of mine, despited at the great reputation I gain’d by exactly predicting another man’s death, have endeavoured to deprive me of it all at once in the most effectual manner, by reporting that I myself was never alive.

   • 1819, Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor, Chapter 8,

     […] your ill-willers may, according to the custom of such persons, impute motives for your journey, whereof, although we know and believe you to be as clear as ourselves, yet natheless their words may find credence in places where the belief in them may much prejudice you […]

   • 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, Prologue,

     “ […] Sirs, this knave arrow likes me not. But it importeth rather to take counsel. Who should this be? Bethink you, Bennet. Of so many black ill-willers, which should he be that doth so hardily outface us? […] ”