WILLIAMS, ROGER, founder of the state of Rhode Island, was born at Conwyl Cayo, Wales. in the year in 1606. In his youth he came to London, and attracted the atten ti of sir Edward Coke by his short-hand notes of sermons and speeches in the star chamber; and was sent by him to Sutton's hospital, now the Charterhousc school, in 16'Li ; and on 30, 1624, lie entered Jesus college, Oxford, where he obtained an exhibition. Ile studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Dutch, and was ordained a rgyman of the church of England, but soon became an extreme Puritan, and emi grided to New England, arriving at Boston, Feb. 5, 1631, "a young•minister, godly and zcablns, with his wife Mary." He refused to join the congregation at Boston because the people would not make public declaration of their repentance for been in communion with the church of England; he therefore went to Salem as assistant preacher, but was soon in trouble for denying the right of magistrates to punish Sab bath-breaking and other religious offenses, as belonging to the first table of the law. For his opposition to the New England theocracry, he was driven from Salem, and took ref•tge at Salem, where he Indian dialects. Two years later be returned to Saleir, only to meet renewed persecution and banishment from the colony for denying the right to take the Indians' lauds without purchase, and the right to impose faith and worship. He held that it was not lawful to require a wicked person to swear or pray, which were both forms of worship; and that the power of the civil magistrate only to the bodies, goods, and outward state of men, and not to their souls and con sciences. Banished from the colony in 1635, and threatened to be sent back to England in order to prevent the infection of his new doctrines from spreading, he escaped in mid winter to the shores of Narragansett bay, accompanied by a few adherents, where he purchased lands of the Indian chiefs, founded the city of Providence, and established a government of pure democracy. Having adopted the belief in adult baptism of
believers by immersion, Williams was baptized by a layman, and then baptized him and ten others, and founded the first Baptist church in America. Later, he doubted the validity of this baptism, and withdrew from the church he had founded. In 1642 he came to England to procure a charter for his colony, and published a Key to the Laa 111111§C8 ef America, and The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Caiise of Conscience Dis cussed, etc., his chief work on the nature and sphere of civil government. After return ing to Rhode Island, lie came a second time to England on business of the colony in 1651, when he published Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health, and their Preserrabbas, d to his friend, lady Vane, and written, as he says, " in the thickest of the native Indians of America, in their very wild houses, and by their barbarous fires;" also, The Hireling Ministry none of Christ's, and The Bloody Tenent yet more bloody by MP. Cotton's Endeavor to wash it White in the Blood of the Lamb. At this period he engaged in an experiment of teaching languages by conversation, and made the acquaintance of , 111ilton. He returned to Rhode Island in 1654, and was elected president of the colony; refused to persecute Quakers, but held a controversy with them, and published George l ox rigged out of his Burrower. By his constant friendship with the Indians, he was of great service to the other colonies; but they 11fused to remove their ban, or to admit Rhode Island into their league. He died in 1683.—See Memoirs, by James D. Knowles (Boston, 1833); William Gammell (Boston, 1846); Romeo Elton (London, 1852).