I have been reading a biography of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, by John M. Barry: Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul – Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty.
Williams was born in 1603 and as a young man became a friend and assistant to Lord Edward Coke, who at the time was sixty years of age. Coke is known by lawyers as a pillar of the development of the common law in England. Williams greatly admired Coke and was heavily influenced by him. Coke sometimes called Williams his son, and after Coke’s death Williams referred to him as his “much honored friend, that man of honor, and wisdom, and piety.”
Roger Williams immigrated to Massachusetts Colony in 1631. He was minister in Salem, but his theological differences with the Pilgrim fathers resulted in his expulsion from the colony in 1636. He went to what is now Rhode Island and founded the Providence Plantation. He believed that government should not meddle in matters of the church—that a “wall of separation” should be erected between them–a principle which became embodied in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”