Roger Williams – 1603?–1683

A radical minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams broke with orthodox Puritan doctrine by advocating elements of religious tolerance. On September 13, 1635, Bay Colony governor Roger Winthrop banished him, and in June 1636, Williams founded Rhode Island on land he legally purchased from the local Native Americans. He established the colony on principles of the separation of church and state (“Coerced religion stinks in God’s nostrils,” he declared) and as a haven of religious tolerance.