Found guilty of high treason, he was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Tasmania.

Williams was born near Argoed, Sirhowy Valley, Monmouthshire, Wales, with much of his childhood spent near the then village of Blackwood, also living for some periods in Caerphilly and Nantyglo.

Along with John Frost and William Jones, he led a large column of men from the Nantyglo area to march south reaching the outskirts of the town [Newport] at about 9am; halting at St. Woolos Church, then moving as a mass to Stow Hill, continuing to the square, and on to the Westgate Hotel, Newport.

But his sentence was commuted and he was transported for life to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia), arriving at the colony on the last day of June 1840.

In 1848 he described the terrible treatment handed out in the colony, 'Many have I known, though guilty of the offence for which they suffered, commit murder in order to expire on the gallows rather than endure the punishment'.

Friendship is as old as the first formation of society and in its own nature so necessary that I know not how a social being could exist without it.On The Doctrine of Pre-destination Your conduct and your doctrine are at variance; for you are holding to your flock that God will have the number which he has decreed, and afterwards go into my neighbours to persuade them that an impotent mortal like myself may be the means of leading an infinite number of those who are already decreed for happiness (for you could not mean that such as are reprobate could be endangered by my heresy) into eternal misery.

According to your tenets I could not be but fulfilling what I was ordained to fulfil, and the act, in itself, is right.On Inconsistency in the Use of Reason Those who distrust reason in matters of faith deem its free and unshackled exercise, not withstanding all their concessions in their pious moods as of essential importance in worldly matters, in which they forget not to use the wisdom of serpents, however wanting in the innocence of doves.