[2] Williams was expelled by the Puritan leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and he established Providence Plantations in 1636 as a refuge offering what he termed "liberty of conscience".

[6] His birth records were destroyed when St. Sepulchre church burned during the Great Fire of London,[7] and his entry in American National Biography notes that Williams gave contradictory information about his age throughout his life.

Richard Bernard, a notable Puritan preacher and author; they were married at the Church of High Laver in Epping Forest District, Essex, around 20 miles north-east of London.

Williams regarded the Church of England as corrupt and false, and he had arrived at the Separatist position by 1630; on December 1, he and his wife boarded the Boston-bound Lyon in Bristol.

In addition, he asserted that civil magistrates must not punish any sort of "breach of the first table" of the Ten Commandments such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that individuals should be free to follow their own convictions in religious matters.

"[19] In December 1632, Williams wrote a lengthy tract that openly condemned the King's charters and questioned the right of Plymouth to the land without first buying it from the Native Americans.

The execution of the order was delayed because Williams was ill and winter was approaching, so he was allowed to stay temporarily, provided that he ceased publicly teaching his opinions.

He traveled 55 miles on foot through the deep snow, from Salem to Raynham, Massachusetts, where the local Wampanoags offered him shelter at their winter camp.

[22] Williams wanted his settlement to be a haven for those "distressed of conscience," and it soon attracted a growing number of families who did not see eye-to-eye with the leaders in Massachusetts Bay.

In November 1637, the General Court of Massachusetts exiled a number of families during the Antinomian Controversy, including Anne Hutchinson and her followers.

He twice surrendered himself as a hostage to the Native Americans to guarantee the safe return of a great sachem from a summons to a court: Pessicus in 1645 and Metacom ("King Philip") in 1671.

Puritans held power in London, and he was able to obtain a charter through the offices of Sir Henry Vane the Younger despite strenuous opposition from Massachusetts's agents.

[26] Williams secured his charter from Parliament for Providence Plantations in July 1644, after which he published his most famous book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience.

Williams sold his trading post at Cocumscussec (near Wickford, Rhode Island) to pay for his journey even though it had provided his primary source of income.

He consistently expressed disapproval of it, though generally he did not object to the enslavement of captured enemy combatants for a fixed duration, a practice that was the normal course of warfare in that time.

[28][29] In these letters, he requested Winthrop to prevent the enslavement of Pequot women and children, as well as to direct the colonial militia to spare them during the fighting.

"[40] Some of the Native American allies aided in the export of enslaved Pequots to the West Indies, while others disagreed with the practice, believing that they should have been given land and provisions to contribute to the wellbeing of colonial settlements.

[43] In response, under Williams's leadership, Providence Plantations passed a law in 1652 restricting the amount of time for which an individual could be held in servitude and tried to prevent the importation of slaves from Africa.

[44] Tensions escalated with the Narragansetts during King Philip's War, despite Williams's efforts to maintain peace, during which his home was burned to the ground.

[28] During the war, Williams led the committee responsible for processing and selling Rhode Island's Native American captives into slavery.

[45][46] Williams's committee recommended that Providence allow residents to keep Native American slaves in spite of earlier municipal statutes.

Both enemies and admirers sometimes called him a "Seeker," associating him with a heretical movement that accepted Socinianism and Universal Reconciliation, but Williams rejected both of these ideas.

[52] Providence residents were determined to raise a monument in his honor in 1860; they "dug up the spot where they believed the remains to be, they found only nails, teeth, and bone fragments.

Williams believed that the state must confine itself to the commandments dealing with the relations between people: murder, theft, adultery, lying, honoring parents, etc.

He described laws concerning an individual's religious beliefs as "rape of the soul" and spoke of the "oceans of blood" shed as a result of trying to command conformity.

These "Independents" were members of the Westminster Assembly; their Apologetical Narration sought a way between extreme Separatism and Presbyterianism, and their prescription was to accept the state church model of Massachusetts Bay.

This work reiterated and amplified the arguments in Bloudy Tenent, but it has the advantage of being written in answer to Cotton's A Reply to Mr. Williams his Examination.

In 2012, Brown University undergraduate Lucas Mason-Brown cracked the code and uncovered conclusive historical evidence attributing its authorship to Williams.

He was considered an important historical figure of religious liberty at the time of American independence, and he was a key influence on the thinking of the Founding Fathers.

Tributes to Williams include: Slate Rock is a prominent boulder on the west shore of the Seekonk River (near the current Gano Park) that was once one of Providence's most important historic landmarks.