Sir Roger Williams (1539/1540 – 12 December 1595) was a Welsh soldier, mercenary and military theorist, who served the Protestant cause, fighting against the Spanish in several theatres of war. Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester said that as a soldier he was "worth his weight in gold". He was later a close associate of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and became a national hero because of his exploits fighting the Catholic League. He has been described as "an obstreperous, opinionated Welsh soldier" who was "Essex's devoted confederate and agent".
In his writings on the art of war, Williams was a strong advocate of the modernisation of armies and the exploitation of new military technologies. Some Shakespeare scholars have suggested that he was the basis for the pugnacious Welsh captain Fluellen in William Shakespeare's Henry V, a character who is also both argumentative and unflinchingly loyal.
Life
Born in Penrhos, Monmouthshire, Williams was the son of Thomas Williams and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of Sir William Vaughan. He was said by Anthony Wood to have attended Brasenose College, Oxford. He spent most of his life soldiering, mainly on the continent. In his own writings he says that his first experience of war was as a page under William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, participating in the storming of St. Quentin in 1557.
Whether or not he ever served Spain, in 1572 Williams took part in a raid during the siege of Goes, South Beveland, an outpost of the main Spanish base at Middelburg which was also under siege. The garrison was far larger than they had expected and the attack failed, with many of the raiding party being killed. Williams and Rowland Yorke escaped by crawling out through ditches on their stomachs. In 1577 he joined John Norreys' expedition of English volunteers to the Low Countries, serving as Norreys' military adviser.
In the 1580s he was in the Netherlands fighting on behalf of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, against Spain. He was present when the Prince was assassinated in 1584, and helped capture the assassin, Balthasar Gérard. After Essex returned to England Williams became overall commander of the English forces supporting Henry and de facto envoy of the Queen. Shortly afterwards he captured Aumerle with only 600 men. During the Siege of Rouen in 1592, he almost killed Albanian-Italian leader Giorgio Basta in personal combat, slicing his neck and driving him and his men from the field. These actions made Williams a famous hero in England, and pamphlets of his exploits were published.
He returned to England permanently in 1594, but broken in health he died the following year and his death elicited a great show of public mourning. He left his property to the Earl of Essex. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral with "full military honours" in an expensive funeral funded by the Earl.
Writings and assessments
Williams was recognised as an expert on military matters by his contemporaries, and wrote A Brief Discourse of War, with his opinions concerning some part of Martial Discipline (1590). He also wrote Newes from Sir Roger Williams (1591). After his death his account of his experiences in the Netherlands was published as Actions of the Low Countries in 1618. Sidney Lee says that "His letters and literary work prove him to have possessed command of a blunt and forcible vocabulary as well as much sagacity as a student of the art of war."
Petition anecdote
According to an anecdote recorded by the Camden Society, Williams once appeared before the queen with a petition she wished to avoid. When he pressed the matter, she dismissed him with the excuse that his new boots smelled too strongly of tanning.
The story includes the implausible assertion that Williams was a tailor before he was a soldier, which may result from a confusion about the pun on "suit[e]", but Lee notes that his family, though members of the gentry, were relatively poor. Likewise, Lee says that "Like Shakespeare's Fluellen, he was constitutionally of a choleric temper and blunt of speech". Wilson also argued that Williams was the author of the Martin Marprelate tracts.
E. K. Chambers accepted that "Wilson has made a fair case for finding, traits of the Welsh soldier Sir Roger Williams in Fluellen". The connection has been supported by some other commentators.