Biography and Memoir

Memoir of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode-Island (Annotated)

Enriched Edition. Religious Liberty, Puritan Dissent, and the Founding of Rhode IslandBy James D. Knowles

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About this audiobook

James D. Knowles's Memoir of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode-Island is a substantial nineteenth-century biography of the Puritan dissenter, Baptist pioneer, and advocate of liberty of conscience. Drawing on colonial records, correspondence, and earlier histories, Knowles presents Williams as both a religious reformer and a political founder whose principles challenged the coercive orthodoxies of New England. The prose is earnest, documentary, and morally interpretive, characteristic of antebellum Protestant historical writing, yet it remains attentive to the intellectual stakes of toleration, exile, and civic independence. Knowles, himself a Baptist minister, editor, and educator, was especially well placed to recover Williams's significance for American religious history. His denominational commitments and scholarly habits shaped a portrait that is sympathetic without being merely devotional. Writing at a time when Americans were reconsidering the origins of republican liberty, Knowles found in Williams a figure who joined theological conviction to institutional innovation. This book is recommended to readers interested in early American history, religious liberty, Rhode Island's origins, and the biography of dissent. It offers not only a life of Williams but a learned meditation on conscience as a foundation of civil society. This enriched edition has been carefully crafted to add value to your reading experience. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.