NOTE: Anne Marbury was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England and christened
there in the Church of England, 20 July 1591. She was the third of fifteen
children born to Reverend Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden, second cousin to
the poet John Dryden. Her mother's ancestry traces to families of English
nobility and to Royal lines, even back to Alfred the Great and Charlemagne.
Anne's father was a minister in the Church of England in Alford and in
London. He was once put on trial for his unorthodox teachings, but he made
peace with the church. His grandfather was Mayor of Lincoln (d. 24 may 1565).
In 1612 Anne Marbury married William Hutchinson in London. During the
next twenty-two years they resided in Alford where fourteen children were born.
Two daughters and a son died there.
To flee religious persecution, Anne and William decided to emigrate to
America. This wealthy family was willing to give up the ease and safety of
England for the barren wilderness of the New World in order to follow the
exiled minister of their choice, John Cotton. It took great courage, a trait
of character Anne displayed throughout her life. Anne was high minded,
charitable, and a devout Christian. She displayed early an independence of
thought and a firmness of conviction in religious matters, for which she would
later have to pay a penalty. But in time she would be honored as the most
conspicuous woman in the Eastern Colonies, and she has been called "the most
intellectual woman of her century in all America."
On the 18th of September, 1634 Anne and William arrived in Boston
Massachusetts Bay Colony on the ship "Griffin," with ten children. The 15th
child was born there two years later. Life in the hardy village of Boston,
particularly for women, was hard, monotonous and depressing in 1634. In these
grim surroundings Anne Hutchinson brought new light and new life, dispensing
medicine, wisdom and cheer in ample proportions, beloved by some, respected by
all. Indeed, Governor Winthrop, whose wise benevolence was tempered with harsh
Puritan justice and suspicion of female "meddling," complained that "Mrs.
Hutchinson, a woman of ready wit and bold spirit," who "brought over with her
dangerous errors" of religious belief, was more sought out "for counsel and
advice than any of the ministers."
Anne Hutchinson was not deterred by the growing resentment among the
Elders of the colony against her views and outspokenness. New suspicions and
jealousies were stirred when she founded the first "woman's club in America--a
meeting in her home for women to discuss the previous Sunday's sermon. Wives
and daughters, excluded from the similar discussion traditionally held by the
men and bored by their harsh week of labor, flocked to her house. As Anne
expounded more and more of her own views, the crowd of women--and men, too--
who came to hear this new gospel and enjoy her warm hospitality became
increasingly large.
When Governor Winthrop and other Elders rejected her beloved brother-in-
law, John Wheelwright, as assistant to John Cotton, the suspicions and
jealousies were intensified. Anne stated publicly that only Cotton and
Wheelright, of all the ministers in the colony, were worthy of attention. Her
brilliant analysis of prevailing theological doctrine cut behind the accepted
words and phrases of the other ministers, bringing fear and anger to their
hearts as well as increased numbers to her meetings. What right had this mere
woman, never ordained as a minister, to preach a divisive gospel? By what
authority did she stress the grace of a believing heart over outwarad evidence,
canon laws and church attendance?
An attack on the church was an attack on the state under the Puritan
theocracy governing Massachusetts. John Wheelwright was censured, then tried
and later banished for sedition and contempt. His friends who signed a
petition on his behalf were deprived of their weapons. The "Hutchinsonians"
who held public office were then defeated in the May 1637 elections. And
finally Anne Hutchinson herself was brought to trial before the General Court.
The woman who stood trial, head unbowed, before the General Court of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony on that raw winter's day in 1637, was indeed
dangerous, according to the charges presented: "One of those who have troubled
the peace of the Commonwealth and the churches". . . "not fit for our society".
. . the "cursed fountain" of "all the mischief and all those dastardly things
which have been overthrowing" law and order in the colony. The great and good
Governor John Winthrop himself presided over the court and tongue-lashed the
defendant with accusations and contempt. With him, their manner as stern as
the rocky shores of New England on which they had carved out a new beachhead of
civilization, the magistrates, deputies and ministers of the Colony sat with
rigid scowls, determined to punish and humiliate this evil source of criticism
and heresy.
The defendant before them--enfeebled in body, depressed in mind but
invincible in spirit--did not fit the picture of a dangerous criminal being
tried by a great state in an historic trial. Anne Hutchinson was a forty-six-
year-old housewife and mother of fifteen children and expecting another,
incapable of violence, disloyalty or duplicity. She stood, weary and alone, in
open court to face her accusers, denied the right of counsel or even the
steadying presence of a friend. She knew she had no prospect whatsoever of
persuading the court or governor of her innocence, and very little prospect of
being treated with the leniency her sex, her high standing in the community,
and her gentle nature might otherwise deserve. Yet, rather than recant and
throw herself upon the mercy of the court, Anne Hutchinson not only defended
but reiterated even more strongly the religious views she was accused of
preaching to others.
Legend had it that the trial was held in an unlighted, unheated church in
Newtown, in order to discourage Anne's friends from crossing the Charles River
and marshes to support her. The weather was raw; the ice was already piling up
on the banks of the Charles. In this gloomy courtroom the fundamental right of
free worship, which someday all Americans would enjoy, was being defended by a
lonely woman.
Ruthlessly and unfairly cross-examined by the openly antagonistic civil
and religious authorities she had challenged, Mrs. Hutchinson replied with
determination and candor to those who sat in biased judgment on her. More than
once she clearly had the better of the argument with her more-learned judges.
She had even the temerity to ask that the ministers who were witnesses in their
own case (as well as judges) be required to take an oath to tell the truth!
She was given every opportunity to repent, to back down, to discard her
dangerous beliefs and teachings, but she would not. And so the official
journal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony records that one "Mrs. Hutchinson, wife
of William Hutchinson, being convicted of traducing the ministers and the
ministry of this country, (was) thereupon banished."
Later, Anne's youngest sister, Katherine, because of her religious views,
was imprisoned in Boston and cruelly whipped. Thus these Marbury sisters were
among those leaders who fought for the right of religious freedom, an ideal
which became, over a century later, one of the fundamental guarantees of the
American Constitution.
Expelled from Boston, excommunicated from the church, pursued for the rest
of her life by the wrath of the elders, she helped to found a new settlement of
religious freedom in the wilderness of Rhode Island.
It was in the Spring of 1638 when Anne joined her beloved Will, who had
earlier gone to find a home in the settlement of Aquidneck, later called Rhode
Island. With her went many of her followers and the following nine children:
Francis, age 17, Bridget, Samuel, Anne, Maria, and Katherine, together with the
small ones, William, Susanna, and two-year-old Zuryell. Edward, the eldest
son, was one of the first settlers of Newport, Rhode Island but then returned
to Boston for business; he died of wounds incurred during the King Phillips
War. Richard is supposed to have stayed behind in Boston; he is next heard of
in London.
Persecution followed Anne to Rhode Island. It appeard that Massachusetts
would claim jurisdiction over the colony there. Her husband died in 1642, and
without his loyalty and protection, his widow moved, with six of her children,
into the New York wilderness. She and her family sought a haven near the Dutch
settlement of New Amsterdam, in Westchester County, New York. She built the
first house in this area.
On August 20, 1643 the settlement was attacked by Indians. They at first
appeared to be friendly, but when the dogs were tied the Indians cruelly
tomahawked the devoted mother and all her children, save one, the nine-year-old
daughter Susanna. They burned the house and carried Susanna into captivity.
she remained with her captors four years and was finally ransomed by the Dutch
and returned to her relatives in Boston.
Susanna, alone, was spared to become our ancestor. She eventually married
John Cole and had eleven children, leaving a numerous posterity including the
five Pratt brothers, sons of Jared Pratt and Charity Dickinson, her fourth-
great granddaughter.
A bronze tablet placed on "Split Rock" in Westchester County, New York
marks the place of the untimely death of Anne Hutchinson. This tablet reads,
"Anne Hutchinson, banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 because of
her devotion to religious liberty. This courageous woman sought freedom from
persecution in New Netherland. Near this rock in 1643 she and her household
were massacred by Indians. This tablet is placed here by the Colonial Dames of
the State of New York, Anno Domini MCMXI."
In front of the State House in Boston there is a majestic statue of Anne
Hutchinson wrought by Cyrus E. Dallin. With head held high, lips proudly
curved, poised, erect and imperious, one hand holding a Bible and the other
resting on the shoulder of her young daughter, she stands as when she paused on
the threshold of the church that had rejected her, and proclaimed, "Better to
be cast out of the church than to deny Christ." She was unafraid. It is an
interesting example of the irony of history that her statue should now occupy a
place of honor in front of the present meeting place of the General Court of
Massachusetts, which cast her out of their jurisdiction so many years before.
-- Trial of Anne Marbury Hutchinson
"The Examination of Mrs Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton. 1637
[The General Court, highest in authority in Massachusetts Bay Colony, consisted of the Governor as Chair of the Court, the Deputy Governor, 5 assistants, and 5 deputies. Several other ministers were in attendance including Rev. John Cotton, Mrs. Hutchinson's minister, and the person who inspired her basic theological position. Anne Hutchinson appears as the accused in this trial].
Mr. [John] Winthrop, Governor: Mrs Hutchinson, you are called here as one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here; you are known to be a woman that hath had a great share in the promoting and divulging of those opinions that are the cause of this trouble, and to be nearly joined not only in affinity and affection with some of those the court had taken notice of and passed censure upon, but you have spoken divers things, as we have been informed, very prejudicial to the honour of the churches and ministers thereof, and you have maintained a meeting and an assembly in your house that hath been condemned by the general assembly as a thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God nor fitting for your sex, and notwithstanding that was cried down you have continued the same. Therefore we have thought good to send for you to understand how things are, that if you be in an erroneous way we may reduce you that so you may become a profitable member here among us. Otherwise if you be obstinate in your course that then the court may take such course that you may trouble us no further. Therefore I would intreat you to express whether you do assent and hold in practice to those opinions and factions that have been handled in court already, that is to say, whether you do not justify Mr. Wheelwright's sermon and the petition.
Mrs. Hutchinson: I am called here to answer before you but I hear no things laid to my charge.
Gov.: I have told you some already and more I can tell you.
Mrs. H.: Name one, Sir.
Gov.: Have I not named some already?
Mrs. H.: What have I said or done?
Gov.: Why for your doings, this you did harbor and countenance those that are parties in this faction that you have heard of.
Mrs. H.: That's matter of conscience, Sir.
Gov.: Your conscience you must keep, or it must be kept for you.
Mrs. H.: Must not I then entertain the saints because I must keep my conscience.
Gov.: Say that one brother should commit felony or treason and come to his brother's house, if he knows him guilty and conceals him he is guilty of the same. It is his conscience to entertain him, but if his conscience comes into act in giving countenance and entertainment to him that hath broken the law he is guilty too. So if you do countenance those that are transgressors of the law you are in the same fact.
Mrs. H.: What law do they transgress?
Gov.: The law of God and of the state.
Mrs. H.: In what particular?
Gov.: Why in this among the rest, whereas the Lord doth say honour thy father and thy mother.
Mrs. H.: Ey Sir in the Lord.
Gov.: This honour you have broke in giving countenance to them.
Mrs. H.: In entertaining those did I entertain them against any act (for there is the thing) or what God has appointed?
Gov.: You knew that Mr. Wheelwright did preach this sermon and those that countenance him in this do break a law.
Mrs. H.: What law have I broken?
Gov.: Why the fifth commandment.
Mrs. H.: I deny that for he [Mr. Wheelwright] saith in the Lord.
Gov.: You have joined with them in the faction.
Mrs. H.: In what faction have I joined with them?
Gov.: In presenting the petition.
Mrs. H.: Suppose I had set my hand to the petition. What then?
Gov.: You saw that case tried before.
Mrs. H.: But I had not my hand to [not signed] the petition.
Gov.: You have councelled them.
Mrs. H.: Wherein?
Gov.: Why in entertaining them.
Mrs. H.: What breach of law is that, Sir?
Gov.: Why dishonouring the commonwealth.
Mrs. H.: But put the case, Sir, that I do fear the Lord and my parents. May not I entertain them that fear the Lord because my parents will not give me leave?
Gov.: If they be the fathers of the commonwealth, and they of another religion, if you entertain them then you dishonour your parents and are justly punishable.
Mrs. H.: If I entertain them, as they have dishonoured their parents I do.
Gov.: No but you by countenancing them above others put honor upon them.
Mrs. H.: I may put honor upon them as the children of God and as they do honor the Lord.
Gov.: We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex but only this: you so adhere unto them and do endeavor to set forward this faction and so you do dishonour us.
Mrs. H.: I do acknowledge no such thing. Neither do I think that I ever put any dishonour upon you.
Gov.: Why do you keep such a meeting at your house as you do every week upon a set day?
Mrs. H.: It is lawful for me to do so, as it is all your practices, and can you find a warrant for yourself and condemn me for the same thing? The ground of my taking it up was, when I first came to this land because I did not go to such meetings as those were, it was presently reported that I did not allow of such meetings but held them unlawful and therefore in that regard they said I was proud and did despise all ordinances. Upon that a friend came unto me and told me of it and I to prevent such aspersions took it up, but it was in practice before I came. Therefore I was not the first.
Gov.: ...By what warrant do you continue such a course?
Mrs. H.: I conceive there lies a clear rule in Titus that the elder women should instruct the younger and then I must have a time wherein I must do it.
Gov.: All this I grant you, I grant you a time for it, but what is this to the purpose that you Mrs. Hutchinson must call a company together from their callings to come to be taught of you?...
Mrs. H.: If you look upon the rule in Titus it is a rule to me. If you convince me that it is no rule I shall yield.
Gov.: You know that there is no rule that crosses another, but this rule crosses that in the Corinthians. But you must take it in this sense that elder women must instruct the younger about their business and to love their husbands and not to make them to clash....
Mrs. H.: Will it please you to answer me this and to give me a rule for then I will willingly submit to any truth. If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of God what rule have I to put them away?.... Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women and why do you call me to teach the court?
Gov.: We do not call you to teach the court but to lay open yourself....
[They continue to argue over what rule she had broken]
Gov.: Your course is not to be suffered for. Besides that we find such a course as this to be greatly prejudicial to the state. Besides the occasion that it is to seduce many honest persons that are called to those meetings and your opinions and your opinions being known to be different from the word of God may seduce many simple souls that resort unto you. Besides that the occasion which hath come of late hath come from none but such as have frequented your meetings, so that now they are flown off from magistrates and ministers and since they have come to you. And besides that it will not well stand with the commonwealth that families should be neglected for so many neighbors and dames and so much time spent. We see no rule of God for this. We see not that any should have authority to set up any other exercises besides what authority hath already set up and so what hurt comes of this you will be guilty of and we for suffering you.
Mrs. H.: Sir, I do not believe that to be so.
Gov.: Well, we see how it is. We must therefore put it away from you or restrain you from maintaining this course.
Mrs H. If you have a rule for it from God's word you may.
Gov.: We are your judges, and not you ours and we must compel you to it.
Mrs. H.: If it please you by authority to put it down I will freely let you for I am subject to your authority.... Deputy Governor, Thomas Dudley: I would go a little higher with Mrs. Hutchinson. About three years ago we were all in peace. Mrs Hutchinson, from that time she came hath made a disturbance, and some that came over with her in the ship did inform me what she was as soon as she was landed. I being then in place dealt with the pastor and teacher of Boston and desired them to enquire of her, and then I was satisfied that she held nothing different from us. But within half a year after, she had vented divers of her strange opinions and had made parties in the country, and at length it comes that Mr. Cotton and Mr. Vane were of her judgment, but Mr. Cotton had cleared himself that he was not of that mind. But now it appears by this woman's meeting that Mrs. Hutchinson hath so forestalled the minds of many by their resort to her meeting that now she hath a potent party in the country. Now if all these things have endangered us as from that foundation and if she in particular hath disparaged all our ministers in the land that they have preached a covenant of works, and only Mr. Cotton a covenant of grace, why this is not to be suffered, and therefore being driven to the foundation and it being found that Mrs. Hutchinson is she that hath depraved all the ministers and hath been the cause of what is fallen out, why we must take away the foundation and the building will fall.
Mrs. H.: I pray, Sir, prove it that I said they preached nothing but a covenant of works.
Dep. Gov.: Nothing but a covenant of works. Why a Jesuit may preach truth sometimes.
Mrs. H.: Did I ever say they preached a covenant of works then?
Dep. Gov.: If they do not preach a covenant of grace clearly, then they preach a covenant of works.
Mrs. H.: No, Sir. One may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than another, so I said....
Dep. Gov.: When they do preach a covenant of works do they preach truth?
Mrs. H.: Yes, Sir. But when they preach a covenant of works for salvation, that is not truth.
Dep. Gov.: I do but ask you this: when the ministers do preach a covenant of works do they preach a way of salvation?
Mrs. H.: I did not come hither to answer questions of that sort.
Dep. Gov.: Because you will deny the thing.
Mrs. H.: Ey, but that is to be proved first.
Dep. Gov.: I will make it plain that you did say that the ministers did preach a covenant of works.
Mrs. H.: I deny that.
Dep. Gov.: And that you said they were not able ministers of the New Testament, but Mr. Cotton only.
Mrs. H.: If ever I spake that I proved it by God's word.
Court: Very well, very well.
Mrs. H.: If one shall come unto me in private, and desire me seriously to tell them what I thought of such an one, I must either speak false or true in my answer.
Dep. Gov.: Likewise I will prove this that you said the gospel in the letter and words holds forth nothing but a covenant of works and that all that do not hold as you do are in a covenant of works.
Mrs. H.: I deny this for if I should so say I should speak against my own judgment....
Mr. Hugh Peters: That which concerns us to speak unto, as yet we are sparing in, unless the court command us to speak, then we shall answer to Mrs. Hutchinson notwithstanding our brethren are very unwilling to answer.
[The Governor says to do so. Six minsters then testify to the particular charges and that she was "not only difficult in her opinions, but also of an intemperate spirit"]
Mr Hugh Peters:.... [I asked her] What difference do you conceive to be between your teacher and us?... Briefly, she told me there was a wide and broad difference.... He preaches the covenant of grace and you the covenant of works, and that you are not able ministers of the New Testament and know no more than the apostles did before the resurrection of Christ. I did then put it to her, What do you conceive of such a brother? She answered he had not the seal of the spirit.
Mrs. H.: If our pastor would shew his writings you should see what I said, and that many things are not so as is reported.
Mr. Wilson:...what is written [here now] I will avouch.
Mr. Weld: [agrees that Peters related Hutchinson's words accurately]
Mr. Phillips: [agrees that Peters related Hutchinson's words accurately and added] Then I asked her of myself (being she spake rashly of them all) because she never heard me at all. She likewise said that we were not able ministers of the New Testament and her reason was because we were not sealed.
Mr. Simmes: Agrees that Peters related Hutchinson's words accurately
Mr. Shephard: Also to Same.
Mr. Eliot: [agrees that Peters related Hutchinson's words accurately]
Dep. Gov.: I called these witnesses and you deny them. You see they have proved this and you deny this, but it is clear. You say they preached a covenant of works and that they were not able ministers of the New Testament; now there are two other things that you did affirm which were that the scriptures in the letter of them held forth nothing but a covenant of works and likewise that those that were under a covenant of works cannot be saved.
Mrs. H.: Prove that I said so.
Gov.: Did you say so?
Mrs. H.: No, Sir, it is your conclusion.
Dep. Gov.: What do I do charging of you if you deny what is so fully proved?
Gov.: Here are six undeniable ministers who say it is true and yet you deny that you did say that they preach a covenant of works and that they were not able ministers of the gospel, and it appears plainly that you have spoken it, and whereas you say that it was drawn from you in a way of friendship, you did profess then that it was out of conscience that you spake....
Mrs. H.:....They thought that I did conceive there was a difference between them and Mr. Cotton.... I might say they might preach a covenant of works as did the apostles, but to preach a covenant of works and to be under a covenant of works is another business.
Dep. Gov.: There have been six witnesses to prove this and yet you deny it. [and then he mentions a seventh, Mr. Nathaniel Ward]
Mrs. H.: I acknowledge using the words of the apostle to the Corinthians unto him, [Mr. Ward] that they that were ministers of the letter and not the spirit did preach a covenant of works.
Gov.: Mrs. Hutchinson, the court you see hath laboured to bring you to acknowledge the error of your way that so you might be reduced, the time grows late, we shall therefore give you a little more time to consider of it and therefore desire that you attend the court again in the morning. . [The next morning]
Gov.: We proceeded... as far as we could... There were divers things laid to her charge: her ordinary meetings about religious exercises, her speeches in derogation of the ministers among us, and the weakening of the hands and hearts of the people towards them. Here was sufficient proof made of that which she was accused of, in that point concerning the ministers and their ministry, as that they did preach a covenant of works when others did preach a covenant of grace, and that they were not able ministers of the New Testament, and that they had not the seal of the spirit, and this was spoken not as was pretended out of private conference, but out of conscience and warrant from scripture alleged the fear of man is a snare and seeing God had given her a calling to it she would freely speak. Some other speeches she used, as that the letter of the scripture held forth a covenant of works, and this is offered to be proved by probable grounds....
Controversy--should the witnesses should be recalled and made swear an oath, as Mrs. Hutchinson desired, is resolved against doing so
Gov.: I see no necessity of an oath in this thing seeing it is true and the substance of the matter confirmed by divers, yet that all may be satisfied, if the elders will take an oath they shall have it given them....
Mrs. H.: After that they have taken an oath I will make good what I say.
Gov.: Let us state the case, and then we may know what to do. That which is laid to Mrs. Hutchinson charge is that, that she hath traduced the magistrates and ministers of this jurisdiction, that she hath said the ministers preached a covenant of works and Mr. Cotton a covenant of grace, and that they were not able ministers of the gospel, and she excuses it that she made it a private conference and with a promise of secrecy, &c. Now this is charged upon her, and they therefore sent for her seeing she made it her table talk, and then she said the fear of man was a snare and therefore she would not be affeared of them....
Dep. Gov.: Let her witnesses be called.
Gov.: Who be they?
Mrs. H.: Mr. Leveret and our teacher and Mr. Coggeshall.
Gov.: Mr. Coggeshall was not present.
Mr. Coggeshall: Yes, but I was. Only I desired to be silent till I should be called.
Gov.: Will you, Mr. Coggeshall, say that she did not say so?
Mr. Coggeshall: Yes, I dare say that she did not say all that which they lay against her.
Mr. Peters: How dare you look into the court to say such a word?
Mr. Coggeshall: Mr. Peters takes upon him to forbid me. I shall be silent.
Mr. Stoughton [assistant of the Court]: Ey, but she intended this that they say.
Gov.: Well, Mr. Leveret, what were the words? I pray, speak.
Mr. Leveret: To my best remembrance when the elders did send for her, Mr. Peters did with much vehemency and intreaty urge her to tell what difference there was between Mr. Cotton and them, and upon his urging of her she said "The fear of man is a snare, but they that trust upon the Lord shall be safe." And being asked wherein the difference was, she answered that they did not preach a covenant of grace so clearly as Mr. Cotton did, and she gave this reason of it: because that as the apostles were for a time without the spirit so until they had received the witness of the spirit they could not preach a covenant of grace so clearly.
Gov.: Don't you remember that she said they were not able ministers of the New Testament?
Mrs. H.: Mr. Weld and I had an hour's discourse at the window and then I spake that, if I spake it....
Gov.: Mr Cotton, the court desires that you declare what you do remember of the conference which was at the time and is now in question.
Mr. Cotton: I did not think I should be called to bear witness in this cause and therefore did not labor to call to remembrance what was done; but the greatest passage that took impression upon me was to this purpose. The elders spake that they had heard that she had spoken some condemning words of their ministry, and among other things they did first pray her to answer wherein she thought their ministry did differ from mine. How the comparison sprang I am ignorant, but sorry I was that any comparison should be between me and my brethren and uncomfortable it was. She told them to this purpose that they did not hold forth a covenant of grace as I did. But wherein did we differ? Why she said that they did not hold forth the seal of the spirit as he doth. Where is the difference there? Say they, why saith she, speaking to one or other of them, I know not to whom. You preach of the seal of the spirit upon a work and he upon free grace without a work or without respect to a work; he preaches the seal of the spirit upon free grace and you upon a work. I told her I was very sorry that she put comparisons between my ministry and theirs, for she had said more than I could myself, and rather I had that she had put us in fellowship with them and not have made that discrepancy. She said, she found the difference....
This was the sum of the difference, nor did it seem to be so ill taken as it is and our brethren did say also that they would not so easily believe reports as they had done and withal mentioned that they would speak no more of it, some of them did; and afterwards some of them did say they were less satisfied than before. And I must say that I did not find her saying that they were under a covenant of works, nor that she said they did preach a covenant of works.
[more back and forth between Rev. John Cotton, trying to defend Mrs. Hutchinson, and Mr. Peters, about exactly what Mrs. Hutchinson said]
Mrs. H.: If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. Being much troubled to see the falseness of the constitution of the Church of England, I had like to have turned Separatist. Whereupon I kept a day of solemn humiliation and pondering of the thing; this scripture was brought unto me--he that denies Jesus Christ to be come in the flesh is antichrist. This I considered of and in considering found that the papists did not deny him to be come in the flesh, nor we did not deny him--who then was antichrist? Was the Turk antichrist only? The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me. So after that being unsatisfied in the thing, the Lord was pleased to bring this scripture out of the Hebrews. he that denies the testament denies the testator, and in this did open unto me and give me to see that those which did not teach the new covenant had the spirit of antichrist, and upon this he did discover the ministry unto me; and ever since, I bless the Lord, he hath let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong. Since that time I confess I have been more choice and he hath left me to distinguish between the voice of my beloved and the voice of Moses, the voice of John the Baptist and the voice of antichrist, for all those voices are spoken of in scripture. Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.
Mr. Nowel [assistant to the Court]: How do you know that was the spirit?
Mrs. H.: How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment?
Dep. Gov.: By an immediate voice.
Mrs. H.: So to me by an immediate revelation.
Dep. Gov.: How! an immediate revelation.
Mrs. H.: By the voice of his own spirit to my soul. I will give you another scripture, Jer[emiah] 46: 27-28--out of which the Lord showed me what he would do for me and the rest of his servants. But after he was pleased to reveal himself to me I did presently, like Abraham, run to Hagar. And after that he did let me see the atheism of my own heart, for which I begged of the Lord that it might not remain in my heart, and being thus, he did show me this (a twelvemonth after) which I told you of before.... Therefore, I desire you to look to it, for you see this scripture fulfilled this day and therefore I desire you as you tender the Lord and the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do. You have power over my body but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul; and assure yourselves thus much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in this course you begin, you will bring a curse upon you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Dep. Gov.: What is the scripture she brings?
Mr. Stoughton [assistant to the Court]: Behold I turn away from you.
Mrs. H.: But now having seen him which is invisible I fear not what man can do unto me.
Gov.: Daniel was delivered by miracle; do you think to be deliver'd so too?
Mrs. H.: I do here speak it before the court. I look that the Lord should deliver me by his providence.... [because God had said to her] though I should meet with affliction, yet I am the same God that delivered Daniel out of the lion's den, I will also deliver thee.
Mr. Harlakenden [assistant to the Court]: I may read scripture and the most glorious hypocrite may read them and yet go down to hell.
Mrs. H.: It may be so....
Gov.: I am persuaded that the revelation she brings forth is delusion.
[The trial text here reads:] All the court but some two or three ministers cry out, we all believe it--we all believe it. [Mrs. Hutchinson was found guilty]
Gov.: The court hath already declared themselves satisfied concerning the things you hear, and concerning the troublesomeness of her spirit and the danger of her course amongst us, which is not to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of the court that Mrs. Hutchinson for these things that appear before us is unfit for our society, and if it be the mind of the court that she shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned till she be sent away, let them hold up their hands.
[All but three did so]
Gov.: Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away.
Mrs. H.: I desire to know wherefore I am banished?
Gov.: Say no more. The court knows wherefore and is satisfied." -- Taken from http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/hutchinson.html.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson, Wikipedia
Anne Hutchinson
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Anne Hutchinson
A woman standing before a table behind which are seated several men, with several other men occupying seats against the walls of the room
Anne Hutchinson on Trial by Edwin Austin Abbey
Born Anne Marbury
baptised 20 July 1591
Alford, Lincolnshire, England
Died August 1643 (aged 52)
New Netherland (later The Bronx, New York)
Education Home schooled and self-taught
Occupation midwife
Known for Role in the Antinomian Controversy
Spouse(s) William Hutchinson
Children Edward, Susanna, Richard, Faith, Bridget, Francis, Elizabeth, William, Samuel, Anne, Mary, Katherine, William, Susanna, Zuriel
Parent(s) Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden
Relatives Grandmother of Governor Peleg Sanford
Great great grandmother of Governor Thomas Hutchinson
Ancestor of U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush
Anne Hutchinson (née Marbury; July 1591 – August 1643) was a Puritan spiritual adviser, mother of 15, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area, and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.
Hutchinson was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, the daughter of Francis Marbury, an Anglican cleric and school teacher who gave her a far better education than most other girls received. She lived in London as a young adult, and there married her old friend from home William Hutchinson. The couple moved back to Alford where they began following dynamic preacher John Cotton in the nearby port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Cotton was compelled to emigrate in 1633, and the Hutchinsons followed a year later with their 11 children and soon became well established in the growing settlement of Boston in New England. Anne was a midwife and very helpful to those needing her assistance, as well as forthcoming with her personal religious understandings. Soon she was hosting women at her house weekly, providing commentary on recent sermons. These meetings became so popular that she began offering meetings for men as well, including the young governor of the colony Henry Vane.
She began to accuse the local ministers (except for Cotton and her husband's brother-in-law John Wheelwright) of preaching a "covenant of works" rather than a "covenant of grace," and many ministers began to complain about her increasingly blatant accusations, as well as certain theological teachings that did not accord with orthodox Puritan theology. The situation eventually erupted into what is commonly called the Antinomian Controversy, culminating in her 1637 trial, conviction, and banishment from the colony. This was followed by a March 1638 church trial in which she was put out of her congregation.
Hutchinson and many of her supporters established the settlement of Portsmouth with encouragement from Providence Plantations founder Roger Williams in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. After her husband's death a few years later, threats of Massachusetts taking over Rhode Island compelled Hutchinson to move totally outside the reach of Boston into the lands of the Dutch. Five of her older surviving children remained in New England or in England, while she settled with her younger children near an ancient landmark called Split Rock in what later became The Bronx in New York City. Tensions were high at the time with the Siwanoy Indian tribe. In August 1643, Hutchinson, six of her children, and other household members were massacred by Siwanoys during Kieft's War. The only survivor was her nine year-old daughter Susanna, who was taken captive.
Hutchinson is a key figure in the history of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry, challenging the authority of the ministers. She is honored by Massachusetts with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." She has been called the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history.
Contents
1 Life in England
1.1 Childhood
1.2 Adulthood—Following John Cotton
2 Boston
2.1 Boston Church
2.2 Home Bible study group
2.3 Antinomian controversy
2.3.1 Tensions build
2.3.2 Ministerial confrontation
2.3.3 Events of 1637
2.3.4 Civil trial: Day 1
2.3.5 Civil trial: Day 2
2.3.6 Civil trial: Verdict
2.3.7 Detention
2.3.8 Church trial
3 Rhode Island
3.1 Final pregnancy
3.2 Dissension in government
4 New Netherland
4.1 Death
5 Historical impact
6 Memorials and legacy
6.1 Literary works
6.2 Namesakes
6.3 Pardon
7 Family
7.1 Immediate family
7.2 Descendants
7.3 Ancestry
8 See also
9 References
9.1 Bibliography
10 Further reading
11 External links
Life in England
Childhood
A three-story building with three men standing in front having a conversation, and one or more other people near the building.
Marshalsea Prison, London, where Hutchinson's father was detained for two years for "heresy"
Anne Hutchinson was born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, and baptised there on 20 July 1591, the daughter of Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden.[1][2] Her father was an Anglican cleric in London with strong Puritan leanings, who felt strongly that clergy should be well educated and clashed with his superiors on this issue.[2] Marbury's repeated challenges to the Anglican authorities led to his censure and imprisonment several years before Anne was born. In 1578, he was given a public trial, of which he made a transcript from memory during a period of house arrest.[3] He later used this transcript to educate and amuse his children, he being the hero and the Bishop of London being portrayed as a buffoon.[3] For his conviction of heresy, Marbury spent two years in Marshalsea Prison on the south side of the River Thames across from London.[4] In 1580, at the age of 25, he was released and was considered sufficiently reformed to preach and teach. He moved to the remote market town of Alford in Lincolnshire, about 140 miles (230 km) north of London.[5]
Anne's father was soon appointed curate (deputy vicar) of Saint Wilfrid's, the local church in Alford, and in 1585 he also became the schoolmaster at the Alford Free Grammar School, one of many such public schools, free to the poor and begun by Queen Elizabeth.[6] About this time, Marbury married his first wife Elizabeth Moore, who bore three children, then died.[7] Within a year of his first wife's death, Marbury married Bridget Dryden, about ten years younger than he and from a prominent Northampton family.[7] Bridget's brother Erasmus was the grandfather of John Dryden, the famous playwright and Poet Laureate.[8] Anne was the third of 15 children born to this marriage, 12 of whom survived early childhood.[9] The Marburys lived in Alford for the first 15 years of Anne's life, and she received a better education than most girls of her time, with her father's strong commitment to learning, and she also became intimately familiar with scripture and Christian tenets.[2] Education at that time was almost exclusively offered to boys and men. One possible reason why Marbury taught his daughters may have been that six of his first seven children were girls. Another reason may have been that the ruling class in Elizabethan England began realising that girls could be schooled, looking to the example of the queen, who spoke six foreign languages.[10]
The family moved from Alford to the heart of London in 1605 when Anne was 15, where her father was given the position of vicar of the Church of Saint Martin's in the Vintry.[11] Here his expression of puritan views was tolerated, though somewhat muffled, because of a shortage of pastors.[11][12] Marbury took on additional work in 1608, preaching in the parish of Saint Pancras, several miles northwest of the city, travelling there by horseback twice a week.[13] In 1610, he replaced that position with one much closer to home and became rector of Saint Margaret's on New Fish Street, only a short walk from Saint Martin in the Vintry.[13] He was at a high point in his career, but he died suddenly at the age of 55 in February 1611, when Anne was 19 years old.[13]
Adulthood—Following John Cotton
The year after her father's death, Anne Marbury, aged 21, married William Hutchinson, a familiar acquaintance from Alford who was a fabric merchant then working in London.[14] The couple was married at St Mary Woolnoth Church in London on 9 August 1612, shortly after which they moved back to their hometown of Alford.[1][14]
Soon they heard about an engaging minister named John Cotton who preached at Saints Botolph's Church in the large port of Boston, about 21 miles (34 km) from Alford.[14] Cotton was installed as minister at Boston the year that the Hutchinsons were married, after having been a tutor at Emmanuel College in Cambridge.[15] He was only 27 years old, yet he had gained a reputation as one of the leading Puritans in England.[15] Once the Hutchinsons heard Cotton preach, the couple made the trip to Boston as often as possible, enduring the ride by horseback when the weather and circumstances allowed.[14] Cotton's spiritual message was different from that of his fellow Puritans, as he placed less emphasis on one's behaviour to attain God's salvation and more emphasis on the moment of religious conversion "in which mortal man was infused with a divine grace."[12] Anne Hutchinson was greatly attracted to Cotton's theology of "absolute grace", which caused her to question the value of "works" and to view the Holy Spirit as "indwelling in the elect saint".[16][17] This allowed her to identify as a "mystic participant in the transcendent power of the Almighty"; such a theology was empowering to women, according to Eve LaPlante, whose status was otherwise determined by their husbands or fathers.[18]
A painting of a man with long curly hair and a slight smile, wearing the bib of a colonial-era minister.
Reverend John Cotton was Hutchinson's mentor and her reason for emigrating to New England.
Another strong influence on Hutchinson was closer to her home in the nearby town of Bilsby. Her brother-in-law, the young minister John Wheelwright, preached a message like that of Cotton.[12] As reformers, both Cotton and Wheelwright encouraged a sense of religious rebirth among their parishioners, but their weekly sermons did not satisfy the yearnings of some Puritan worshippers. This led to the rise of conventicles, which were gatherings of "those who had found grace" to listen to sermon repetitions, discuss and debate scripture, and pray.[19] These gatherings were particularly important to women because they allowed women to take on roles of religious leadership that were otherwise denied them in a male-dominated church hierarchy, according to some modern scholars.[19] Hutchinson was inspired by Cotton and by other women who ran conventicles, and she began holding meetings in her own home, where she reviewed recent sermons with her listeners, and provided her own explanations of the message.[20]
The Puritans wanted to do away with the ceremony of the Church of England and govern their churches based on a consensus of the parishioners. They preferred to eliminate bishops appointed by the monarchs, choose their own church elders (or governors), and provide for a lay leader and two ministers—one a teacher in charge of doctrine, and the other a pastor in charge of people's souls.[21] By 1633, Cotton's inclination toward such Puritan practices had attracted the attention of Archbishop William Laud, who was on a campaign to suppress any preaching and practices that did not conform to the practices of the established Anglican Church.[22] In that year, Cotton was removed from his ministry, and he went into hiding.[22] Threatened with imprisonment, he made a hasty departure for New England aboard the ship Griffin, taking his pregnant wife. She gave birth to their child during the voyage to the colonies, whom they named Seaborn.[23]
When Cotton left England, Anne Hutchinson described it as a "great trouble unto her," and said that she "could not be at rest" until she followed her minister to New England.[15] Hutchinson believed that the Spirit instructed her to follow Cotton to America, "impressed by the evidence of divine providence".[19] She was well into her 14th pregnancy, however, so she did not travel until after the baby was born.[22] With the intention of soon going to New England, the Hutchinsons allowed their oldest son Edward to sail with Cotton before the remainder of the family made the voyage.[24] In 1634, 43-year-old Anne Hutchinson set sail from England with her 48-year-old husband William and their other ten surviving children, aged about eight months to 19 years. They sailed aboard the Griffin, the same ship that had carried Cotton and their oldest son a year earlier.[24]
Boston
William Hutchinson was highly successful in his mercantile business and brought a considerable estate with him to New England,[25] arriving in Boston in the late summer of 1634. The Hutchinson family purchased a half-acre lot on the Shawmut Peninsula, now downtown Boston.[26] Here they had a house built, one of the largest on the peninsula, with a timber frame and at least two stories.[26] (The house stood until October 1711, when it was consumed in the great fire of Boston, after which the Old Corner Bookstore was built on the site.)[27] The Hutchinsons soon were granted Taylor's Island in the Boston harbour, where they grazed their sheep, and they also acquired 600 acres of land at Mount Wollaston, 10 miles (16 km) south of Boston in the area that later became Quincy.[28] Once established, William Hutchinson continued to prosper in the cloth trade, and made land purchases and investments. He became a town selectman and deputy to the General Court.[19] Anne Hutchinson likewise fit into her new home with ease, devoting many hours to those who were ill or in need.[29] She became an active midwife, and while tending to women in childbirth, she provided them with spiritual advice.[30] Magistrate John Winthrop noted that "her ordinary talke was about the things of the Kingdome of God," and "her usuall conversation was in the way of righteousness and kindnesse."[30]
Boston Church
The Hutchinsons became members of the Boston church, the most important church in the colony.[31] With its location and harbour, Boston was New England's centre of commerce, and its church was characterised by Winthrop as "the most publick, where Seamen and all Strangers came."[31] The church membership had grown from 80 to 120 during Cotton's first four months there. In his journal, Winthrop proclaimed, "more were converted & added to that Churche, than to all the other Churches in the Baye." Historian Michael Winship noted in 2005 that the church seemed to approach the Puritan ideal of a Christian community.[31] Early Massachusetts historian William Hubbard found the church to be "in so flourishing a condition as were scarce any where else to be paralleled." Winship considers it an exceptional twist of fate that the colony's most important church also had the most unconventional minister in John Cotton.[32] The more extreme religious views of Hutchinson and Henry Vane, the colony's young governor, did not much stand out because of Cotton's divergence from the theology of his fellow ministers.[32]
Home Bible study group
Hutchinson's visits to women in childbirth led to discussions along the lines of the conventicles in England. She soon began hosting weekly meetings at her home for women who wanted to discuss Cotton's sermons and hear her explanations and elaborations.[29] Her meetings for women became so popular that she had to organise meetings for men, as well, and she was hosting 60 or more people per week.[15] These gatherings brought women, as well as their husbands, "to enquire more seriously after the Lord Jesus Christ."[33]
As the meetings continued, Hutchinson began offering her own religious views, stressing that only "an intuition of the Spirit" would lead to one's election by God, and not good works.[29] Her theological interpretations began diverging from the more legalistic views found among the colony's ministers, and the attendance increased at her meetings and soon included Governor Vane.[29] Her ideas that one's outward behaviour was not necessarily tied to the state of one's soul became attractive to those who might have been more attached to their professions than to their religious state, such as merchants and craftsmen.[29] The colony's ministers became more aware of Hutchinson's meetings, and they contended that such "unauthorised" religious gatherings might confuse the faithful. Hutchinson responded to this with a verse from Titus, saying that "the elder women should instruct the younger."[34]
Antinomian controversy
Main article: Antinomian Controversy
Tensions build
Hutchinson's gatherings were seen as unorthodox by some of the colony's ministers, and differing religious opinions within the colony eventually became public debates. The resulting religious tension erupted into what has traditionally been called the Antinomian Controversy, but has more recently been labelled the Free Grace Controversy.
A painting of a man with a white moustache and small beard. He is wearing a skull cap and the bib of a colonial-era minister.
Reverend John Wheelwright was an ally of Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy, and both were banished.
The Reverend Zechariah Symmes had sailed to New England on the same ship as the Hutchinsons. In September 1634, he told another minister that he doubted Anne Hutchinson's orthodoxy, based on questions that she asked him following his shipboard sermons.[35] This issue delayed Hutchinson's membership to the Boston church by a week, until a pastoral examination determined that she was sufficiently orthodox to join the church.[36]
In 1635, a difficult situation occurred when senior pastor John Wilson returned from a lengthy trip to England where he had been settling his affairs. Hutchinson was exposed to his teaching for the first time, and she immediately saw a big difference between her own doctrines and his.[37] She found his emphasis on morality and his doctrine of "evidencing justification by sanctification" to be disagreeable. She told her followers that Wilson lacked "the seal of the Spirit."[37] Wilson's theological views were in accord with all of the other ministers in the colony except for Cotton, who stressed "the inevitability of God's will" ("free grace") as opposed to preparation (works).[38] Hutchinson and her allies had become accustomed to Cotton's doctrines, and they began disrupting Wilson's sermons, even finding excuses to leave when Wilson got up to preach or pray.[39]
Thomas Shepard, the minister of Newtown (which later became Cambridge), began writing letters to Cotton as early as the spring of 1636.[40] He expressed concern about Cotton's preaching and about some of the unorthodox opinions found among his Boston parishioners. Shepard went even further when he began criticising the Boston opinions to his Newtown congregation during his sermons.[40] In May 1636, the Bostonians received a new ally when the Reverend John Wheelwright arrived from England and immediately aligned himself with Cotton, Hutchinson, and other "free grace" advocates. Wheelwright had been a close neighbor of the Hutchinsons in Lincolnshire, and his wife was a sister of Hutchinson's husband.[41] Another boost for the free grace advocates came during the same month, when the young aristocrat Henry Vane was elected as the governor of the colony. Vane was a strong supporter of Hutchinson, but he also had his own ideas about theology that were considered not only unorthodox, but radical by some.[42]
Hutchinson and the other free grace advocates continued to question the orthodox ministers in the colony. Wheelwright began preaching at Mount Wollaston, about ten miles south of the Boston meetinghouse, and his sermons began to answer Shepard's criticisms with his own criticism of the covenant of works. This mounting "pulpit aggression" continued throughout the summer, along with the lack of respect shown Boston's Reverend Wilson. Wilson endured these religious differences for several months before deciding that the affronts and errors were serious enough to require a response.[32] He is the one who likely alerted magistrate John Winthrop, one of his parishioners, to take notice. On or shortly after 21 October 1636, Winthrop gave the first public warning of the problem that consumed him and the leadership of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for much of the next two years.[43] In his journal he wrote, "One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church at Boston, a woman of a ready wit and a bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: 1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. 2. That no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification."[44] He went on to elaborate these two points, and the Antinomian Controversy began with this journal entry.[44]
Ministerial confrontation
On 25 October 1636, seven ministers gathered at the home of Cotton to confront the developing discord; they held a "private conference" which included Hutchinson and other lay leaders from the Boston church.[35][45] Some agreement was reached, and Cotton "gave satisfaction to them [the other ministers], so as he agreed with them all in the point of sanctification, and so did Mr. Wheelwright; so as they all did hold, that sanctification did help to evidence justification."[35] Another issue was that some of the ministers had heard that Hutchinson had criticised them during her conventicles for preaching a covenant of works and said that they were not able ministers of the New Testament. Hutchinson responded to this only when prompted, and only to one or two ministers at a time. She believed that her response, which was largely coaxed from her, was private and confidential.[46] A year later, her words were used against her in a trial that resulted in her banishment from the colony.[47]
A painting of a man with a virile face and long dark hair; he is wearing a dark red robe-like outfit, and his demeanour conveys elegance and importance.
Governor Henry Vane strongly supported Hutchinson during the colony's difficulties.
By late 1636, as the controversy deepened, Hutchinson and her supporters were accused of two heresies in the Puritan church: antinomianism and familism. The word "antinomianism" literally means "against or opposed to the law"; in a theological context, it means "the moral law is not binding upon Christians, who are under the law of grace."[48] According to this view, if one was under the law of grace, then moral law did not apply, allowing one to engage in immoral acts.[29] Familism was named for a 16th-century sect called the Family of Love, and it involved one's perfect union with God under the Holy Spirit, coupled with freedom both from sin and from the responsibility for it.[49] Hutchinson and her supporters were sometimes accused of engaging in immoral behaviour or "free love" in order to discredit them, but such acts were antithetical to their doctrine.[29][48] Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and Vane all took leading roles as antagonists of the orthodox party, but theologically, it was Cotton's differences of opinion with the colony's other ministers that was at the centre of the controversy.[50]
By winter, the theological schism had become great enough that the General Court called for a day of fasting to help ease the colony's difficulties. During the appointed fast-day on Thursday, 19 January 1637, Wheelwright preached at the Boston church in the afternoon. To the Puritan clergy, his sermon was "censurable and incited mischief."[51] The colony's ministers were offended by the sermon, but the free grace advocates were encouraged, and they became more vociferous in their opposition to the "legal" ministers. Governor Vane began challenging the doctrines of the colony's divines, and supporters of Hutchinson refused to serve during the Pequot War of 1637 because Wilson was the chaplain of the expedition.[39][52] Ministers worried that the bold stand of Hutchinson and her supporters began to threaten the "Puritan's holy experiment."[39] Had they succeeded, historian Dunn believes that they would have profoundly changed the thrust of Massachusetts history.[53]
Events of 1637
By March, the political tide began to turn against the free grace advocates. Wheelwright was tried for contempt and sedition that month for his fast-day sermon and was convicted in a close vote, but not yet sentenced. During the election of May 1637, Henry Vane was replaced as governor by John Winthrop; in addition, all the other Boston magistrates who supported Hutchinson and Wheelwright were voted out of office. By the summer of 1637, Vane sailed back to England, never to return. With his departure, the time was ripe for the orthodox party to deal with the remainder of their rivals.[54]
The autumn court of 1637 convened on 2 November and sentenced Wheelwright to banishment, ordering him to leave the colony within 14 days. Several of the other supporters of Hutchinson and Wheelwright were tried and given varied sentences. Following these preliminaries, it was Anne Hutchinson's turn to be tried.[55]
Civil trial: Day 1
Hutchinson was brought to trial on 7 November 1637, with Wheelwright banished and other court business taken care of. The trial was presided over by Governor John Winthrop, on the charge of "traducing [slandering] the ministers". Other charges against her were laid out by Winthrop, including being one who "troubled the peace of the commonwealth and churches", promoting and divulging opinions that had caused recent troubles, and continuing to hold meetings at her home despite a recent synod that had condemned them.[56]
They found it difficult to charge her because she had never spoken her opinions in public, unlike Wheelwright and the other men who had been tried, nor had she ever signed any statements about them. Winthrop's first two lines of prosecution were to portray her as a co-conspirator of others who had openly caused trouble in the colony, and then to fault her for holding conventicles. Question by question, Hutchinson effectively stonewalled him in her responses,[57] and Winthrop was unable to find a way to convert her known membership in a seditious faction into a convictable offence. Deputy governor Thomas Dudley had a substantial background in law, and he stepped in to assist the prosecution. Dudley questioned Hutchinson about her conventicles and her association with the other conspirators. With no answer by Hutchinson, he moved on to the charge of her slandering the ministers.[58]
A painting of a man with a stern expression on his face, wearing very dark clothing so that his pale hands show boldly. His hands are placed in front of him, separately, one above the other.
John Winthrop presided over Hutchinson's trial in 1637 as both accuser and judge.
The remainder of the trial was spent on this last charge. The prosecution intended to demonstrate that Hutchinson had made disparaging remarks about the colony's ministers, and to use the October meeting as their evidence.[58] Six ministers had presented to the court their written versions of the October conference, and Hutchinson agreed with the substance of their statements. Her defence was that she had spoken reluctantly and in private, that she "must either speak false or true in my answers" in the ministerial context of the meeting.[58] In those private meetings, she had cited Proverbs 29:25, "The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe."[58] The court was not interested in her distinction between public and private statements.[59]
At the end of the first day of the trial, Winthrop recorded, "Mrs. Hutchinson, the court you see hath labored to bring you to acknowledge the error of your way that so you might be reduced. The time now grows late. We shall therefore give you a little more time to consider of it and therefore desire that you attend the court again in the morning."[60] The first day had gone fairly well for Hutchinson, who had held her own in a battle of wits with the magistrates.[60] Biographer Eve LaPlante suggests, "Her success before the court may have astonished her judges, but it was no surprise to her. She was confident of herself and her intellectual tools, largely because of the intimacy she felt with God."[61]
Civil trial: Day 2
During the morning of the second day of the trial, it appeared that Hutchinson had been given some legal counsel the previous evening, and she had more to say. She continued to criticise the ministers of violating their mandate of confidentiality. She said that they had deceived the court by not telling about her reluctance to share her thoughts with them. She insisted that the ministers testify under oath, which they were very hesitant to do.[59] Magistrate Simon Bradstreet said that "she would make the ministers sin if they said something mistaken under oath", but she answered that if they were going to accuse her, "I desire it may be upon oath."[62] As a matter of due process, the ministers would have to be sworn in, but would agree to do so only if the defence witnesses spoke first.
There were three such witnesses, all from the Boston church: deacon John Coggeshall, lay leader Thomas Leverett, and minister John Cotton.[63] The first two witnesses made brief statements that had little effect on the court, but Cotton was grilled extensively. When Cotton testified, he tended to not remember many events of the October meeting, and attempted to soften the meaning of statements that Hutchinson was being accused of. He stressed that the ministers were not as upset about any Hutchinson remarks at the end of the October meeting as they appeared to be later.[64] Dudley reiterated that Hutchinson had told the ministers that they were not able ministers of the New Testament; Cotton replied that he did not remember her saying that.[64]
There was more parrying between Cotton and the court, but the exchanges were not picked up in the transcript of the proceedings. Hutchinson asked the court for leave to "give you the ground of what I know to be true."[65] She then addressed the court with her own judgment:
You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm—for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my Saviour, I am at his appointment, the bounds of my habitation are cast in heaven, no further do I esteem of any mortal man than creatures in his hand, I fear none but the great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of our hands. Therefore take heed how you proceed against me—for I know that, for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity and this whole state.[66]
—?Anne Hutchinson at trial
This was the "dramatic high point of the most analyzed event of the free grace controversy", wrote historian Michael Winship.[63] Historians have given a variety of reasons for this seemingly impulsive statement, including an "exultant impulse", "hysteria", "cracking under the strain of the inquest", and being "possessed of the Spirit".[67] Winship, citing the work of historian Mary Beth Norton, suggests that Hutchinson consciously decided to explain why she knew that the divines of the colony were not able ministers of the New Testament. This was "not histrionics, but pedagogy," according to Winship; it was Hutchinson's attempt to teach the Court, and doing so was consistent with her character.[67]
Civil trial: Verdict
Hutchinson simplified the task of her opponents, whose prosecution had been somewhat shaky.[68] Her revelation was considered not only seditious, but also in contempt of court. Cotton was pressed by Dudley on whether or not he supported Hutchinson's revelation; he said that he could find theological justification for it. Cotton may have still been angry over the zeal with which some opponents had come after the dissidents within his congregation.[69] Winthrop was not interested in this quibbling, though; he was using Hutchinson's bold assertions to lead the court in the direction of rewriting history, according to the historical interpretations of Winship. Many of the Puritans had been convinced that there was a single destructive prophetic figure behind all of the difficulties that the colony had been having, and Hutchinson had just become the culprit.[70] Winthrop addressed the court, "if therefore it be the mind of the court, looking at [her] as the principal cause of all our trouble, that they would now consider what is to be done with her."[71]
The Bostonians made a final effort to slow the proceedings. William Coddington rose, asserting, "I do not see any clear witness against her, and you know it is a rule of the court that no man may be a judge and an accuser too," ending with, "Here is no law of God that she hath broken nor any law of the country that she hath broke, and therefore deserve no censure."[72] The court wanted a sentence but could not proceed until some of the ministers spoke. Three of the ministers were sworn in, and each testified against Hutchinson. Winthrop moved to have her banished; in the ensuing tally, only the Boston deputies voted against conviction.[73] Hutchinson challenged the sentence's legitimacy, saying, "I desire to know wherefore I am banished." Winthrop responded, "The court knows wherefore and is satisfied."[74]
Hutchinson was called a heretic and an instrument of the devil, and was condemned to banishment by the Court "as being a woman not fit for our society".[75] The Puritans sincerely believed that, in banishing Hutchinson, they were protecting God's eternal truth.[76] Winthrop summed up the case with genuine feeling:
Thus it pleased the Lord to heare the prayers of his afflicted people ... and by the care and indevour of the wise and faithfull ministers of the Churches, assisted by the Civill authority, to discover this Master-piece of the old Serpent.... It is the Lords work, and it is marvellous in our eyes.[76]
Detention
Following her civil trial, Hutchinson was put under house arrest and ordered to be gone by the end of the following March. In the interim, she was not allowed to return home, but was detained at the house of Joseph Weld, brother of the Reverend Thomas Weld, located in Roxbury, about two miles from her home in Boston.[77] The distance was not great, yet Hutchinson was rarely able to see her children because of the weather, which was particularly harsh that winter.[78] Winthrop referred to Hutchinson as "the prisoner" and was determined to keep her isolated so that others would not be inspired by her, according to LaPlante.[78] She was frequently visited by various ministers, whose intent, according to LaPlante, was to reform her thinking but also to collect evidence against her.[78] Thomas Shepard was there to "collect errors", and concluded that she was a dangerous woman.[79] Shepard and the other ministers who visited her drew up a list of her theological errors and presented them to the Boston church, which decided that she should stand trial for these views.[80]
Church trial
Hutchinson was called to trial on Thursday, 15 March 1638, weary and in poor health following a four-month detention. The trial took place at her home church in Boston, though many of her supporters were gone. Her husband and other friends had already left the colony to prepare a new place to live. Her only family members present were her oldest son Edward and his wife, her daughter Faith and son-in-law Thomas Savage, and her sister Katherine with her husband Richard Scott.[81]
Sketch of a man with long flowing hair who is wearing the bib of a colonial-era minister.
Reverend John Wilson had been ridiculed by Hutchinson; he made the final pronouncement of excommunication during her church trial.
The ministers intended to defend their orthodox doctrine and to examine Hutchinson's theological errors.[81] Ruling elder Thomas Leverett was charged with managing the examination. He called Hutchinson and read the numerous errors with which she had been charged, and a nine-hour interrogation followed in which the ministers delved into some weighty points of theology.[82] At the end of the session, only four of the many errors were covered, and Cotton was put in the uncomfortable position of delivering the admonition to his admirer. He said, "I would speake it to Gods Glory [that] you have bine an Instrument of doing some good amongst us… he hath given you a sharp apprehension, a ready utterance and abilitie to exprese yourselfe in the Cause of God."[83] The ministers overwhelmingly concluded that Hutchinson's unsound beliefs outweighed all the good which she had done, and that she endangered the spiritual welfare of the community.[83] Cotton continued,
You cannot Evade the Argument… that filthie Sinne of the Communitie of Woemen; and all promiscuous and filthie cominge togeather of men and Woemen without Distinction or Relation of Mariage, will necessarily follow . Though I have not herd, nayther do I thinke you have bine unfaythfull to your Husband in his Marriage Covenant, yet that will follow upon it.[83]
Here Cotton was making a link between Hutchinson's theological ideas and the more extreme behaviour credited to the antinomians and familists.[84] He concluded:
Therefor, I doe Admonish you, and alsoe charge you in the name of Ch[rist] Je[sus], in whose place I stand… that you would sadly consider the just hand of God agaynst you, the great hurt you have done to the Churches, the great Dishonour you have brought to Je[sus] Ch[rist], and the Evell that you have done to many a poore soule.[85]
With this, Hutchinson was instructed to return in one week on the next lecture day.[85]
Cotton had not yet given up on his parishioner. With the permission of the court, Hutchinson was allowed to spend the week at his home, where the recently arrived Reverend John Davenport was also staying. All week, the two ministers worked with her and, under their supervision, she wrote out a formal recantation of her unsound opinions that had formerly brought objection.[86] Hutchinson stood at the next meeting on Thursday, 22 March and read her recantation in a subdued voice to the congregation. She admitted to having been wrong about the soul and spirit, wrong about the resurrection of the body, wrong in prophesying the destruction of the colony, and wrong in her demeanour toward the ministers, and she agreed that sanctification could be evidence of justification (what she called a "covenant of works") "as it flowes from Christ and is witnessed to us by the Spirit".[87] Had the trial ended there, she would likely have remained in good standing with the Boston church, and had the possibility of returning some day.[88]
Wilson explored an accusation made by Shepard at the end of the previous meeting, and new words brought on new assaults. The outcome of her trial was uncertain following the first day's grilling, but her downfall came when she would not acknowledge that she held certain theological errors before her four-month imprisonment.[88] With this, she was accused of lying but, even at this point, Winthrop and a few of the ministers wanted her soul redeemed because of her significant evangelical work before she "set forth her owne stuffe".[89] To these sentiments, Shepard vehemently argued that Hutchinson was a "Notorious Imposter" in whose heart there was never any grace. He admonished the "heinousness of her lying" during a time of supposed humiliation.[90]
Shepard had swayed the proceedings, with Cotton signalling that he had given up on her, and her sentence was presented by Wilson:
Forasmuch as you, Mrs. Hutchinson, have highly transgressed and offended… and troubled the Church with your Errors and have drawen away many a poor soule, and have upheld your Revelations; and forasmuch as you have made a Lye…. Therefor in the name of our Lord Je[sus] Ch[rist]… I doe cast you out and… deliver you up to Sathan… and account you from this time forth to be a Hethen and a Publican…. I command you in the name of Ch[rist] Je[sus] and of this Church as a Leper to withdraw your selfe out of the Congregation.[91]
Hutchinson was now banished from the colony and removed from the congregation, and her leading supporters had been given three months to leave the colony, including Coddington and Coggeshall, while others were disenfranchised or dismissed from their churches.[72] The court in November had ordered that 58 citizens of Boston and 17 from adjacent towns be disarmed unless they repudiated the "seditious label" given them, and many of these people followed Hutchinson into exile.[92]
Rhode Island
A document with some hand-written and difficult to read text at the top, followed by 23 signatures, some of which are also difficult to read, with some washed-out text appearing in the margins. The document appears old and fragile.
Portsmouth Compact
During Hutchinson's imprisonment, several of her supporters prepared to leave the colony and settle elsewhere. One such group of men, including her husband Will, met on 7 March 1638 at the home of wealthy Boston merchant William Coddington. Ultimately, 23 men signed what is known as the Portsmouth Compact, forming themselves into a "Bodie Politick" and electing Coddington as their governor, but giving him the Biblical title of "judge". Nineteen of the signers initially planned to move to New Jersey or Long Island, but Roger Williams convinced them to settle in the area of his Providence Plantations settlement. Coddington purchased Aquidneck Island (later named Rhode Island) in the Narragansett Bay from the Narragansetts, and the settlement of Pocasset was founded (soon renamed Portsmouth). Anne Hutchinson followed in April, after the conclusion of her church trial.[93]
Hutchinson, her children, and others accompanying her travelled for more than six days by foot in the April snow to get from Boston to Roger Williams' settlement at Providence.[94] They took boats to get to Aquidneck Island, where many men had gone ahead of them to begin constructing houses.[95] In the second week of April, she reunited with her husband, from whom she had been separated for nearly six months.[95]
Final pregnancy
Hutchinson went into labour in May 1638, following the stress of her trial, her imprisonment all winter, and the difficult trip to Aquidneck Island. She delivered what her doctor John Clarke[96] described as a handful of transparent grapes. This is known now as a hydatidiform mole, a condition occurring most often in women over 45, resulting from one or two sperm cells fertilising a blighted egg.[97] Hutchinson had been ill most of the winter, with unusual weakness, throbbing headaches, and bouts of vomiting.[97] Most writers on the subject agree that she had been pregnant during her trial. Historian Emery Battis, citing expert opinion, suggests that she may not have been pregnant at all during that time, but displaying acute symptoms of menopause.[96] The following April after reuniting with her husband, she became pregnant, only to miscarry the hydatidiform mole.[96] A woman could have suffered severe menopausal symptoms who had undergone a continuous cycle of pregnancies, deliveries, and lactations for 25 years, with the burdens of raising a large family and subjected to the extreme stress of her trials.[98]
The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gloated over Hutchinson's suffering and also that of Mary Dyer, a follower who suffered the premature and stillbirth of a severely deformed infant. The leaders classified the women's misfortunes as the judgement of God.[93] Winthrop wrote, "She brought forth not one, but thirty monstrous births or thereabouts", then continued, "see how the wisdom of God fitted this judgment to her sin every way, for look—as she had vented misshapen opinions, so she must bring forth deformed monsters."[99] Massachusetts continued to persecute Hutchinson's followers who stayed in the Boston area. Laymen were sent from the Boston church to Portsmouth to convince Hutchinson of her errors; she shouted at them, "the Church at Boston? I know no such church, neither will I own it. Call it the whore and strumpet of Boston, but no Church of Christ!"[92]
Dissension in government
Less than a year after Pocasset was settled, it suffered rifts and civil difficulties. Coddington had openly supported Hutchinson following her trial, but he had become autocratic and began to alienate his fellow settlers.[100] Early in 1639, Hutchinson became acquainted with Samuel Gorton, who attacked the legitimacy of the magistrates.[101] On 28 April 1639, Gorton and a dozen other men ejected Coddington from power. Hutchinson may not have supported this rebellion, but her husband was chosen as the new governor. Two days later, over 30 men signed a document forming a new "civil body politic". Winthrop noted in his journal that at Aquidneck,
the people grew very tumultuous and put out Mr. Coddington and the other three magistrates, and chose Mr. William Hutchinson only, a man of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife, who had been the beginner of all the former troubles in the country and still continued to breed disturbance.[44]
Coddington and several others left the colony, establishing the settlement of Newport at the south end of the island. The freemen of Pocasset changed the name of their town to Portsmouth. They adopted a new government which provided for trial by jury and separation of church and state.[93] The men who accompanied Coddington to Newport tended to be the strongest leaders; several became presidents or governors of the entire united colony after 1646, such as Coggeshall, Nicholas Easton, William Brenton, Jeremy Clarke, and Henry Bull.[102] On 12 March 1640, the towns of Portsmouth and Newport agreed to re-unite peacefully. Coddington became governor of the island, and William Hutchinson was chosen as one of his assistants. The towns were to remain autonomous with laws made by the citizens.[93]
During her tenure in Portsmouth, Hutchinson developed a new philosophy concerning religion. She persuaded her husband to resign from his position as a magistrate, as Roger Williams put it, "because of the opinion, which she had newly taken up, of the unlawfulness of magistracy."[93]
Hutchinson's husband William died some time after June 1641 at the age of 55, the same age at which Anne's father had died.[103][104] He was buried in Portsmouth. No record of his death exists because there was no established church, which would have been the customary repository for such records.[103]
New Netherland
A photograph of a very large rock, about the size of a small truck, that has a large fissure in the middle. The rock is surrounded by trees and other vegetation.
Split Rock, near where the Hutchinson family was massacred
Not long after the settlement of Aquidneck Island, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made some serious threats to take over the island and the entire Narragansett Bay area, causing Hutchinson and other settlers much anxiety. This compelled her to move totally out of the reach of the Bay colony and its sister colonies in Connecticut and New Haven and move into the jurisdiction of the Dutch.[105] Hutchinson went to New Netherland some time after the summer of 1642 with seven of her children, a son-in-law, and several servants—16 total persons by several accounts. There they settled near an ancient landmark called Split Rock, not far from what became the Hutchinson River in northern Bronx, New York City.[105] Other Rhode Island families were in the area, including the Throckmortons and the Cornells. By one account, Hutchinson bought her land from John Throckmorton (for whom Throggs Neck is named) who had earlier been a settler of Providence with Roger Williams, but was now living in New Netherland.[105]
The Hutchinsons stayed temporarily in an abandoned house while a permanent house was being built with the help of James Sands, who had married Katherine Walker, a granddaughter of William Hutchinson's brother Edward.[106] Sands later became a settler of Block Island (later New Shoreham, Rhode Island), and the Reverend Samuel Niles, another early settler of Block Island, recorded the following about Sands' experience in New Netherland:
Mrs. Hutchinson... removed to Rhode Island, but making no long stay there, she went further westward to a place called Eastchester, now in the eastern part of the province of New York, where she prepared to settle herself; but not to the good liking of the Indians that lived back in the woods, as the sequel proves. In order to pursue her purpose, she agreed with Captain James Sands, then a young man, to build her house, and he took a partner with him in the business... there came a company of Indians to the frame where he was at work, and made a great shout and sat down. After some time, they gathered up his tools, put his broad axe on his shoulders and his other tools into his hands, and made signs for him to go away. But he seemed to take no notice of them, but continued in his work.[107]
Thus the natives gave overt clues that they were displeased with the settlement being formed there. The property had supposedly been secured by an agent of the Dutch West India Company in 1640, but the negotiation was transacted with members of the Siwanoy people in distant Norwalk, and the local natives likely had little to do with that transaction, if they even knew of it at all.[108] Hutchinson was therefore taking a considerable risk in putting a permanent dwelling at this site.[108][109]
The exact location of the Hutchinson house has been a source of great interest for several centuries. LaPlante hints in her biography of Hutchinson that the homestead was near the Indian Trail that went through modern-day Pelham Bay Park, on the east side of the Hutchinson River. Lockwood Barr offers another hypothesis, citing the extensive land title research of Otto Hufeland published by the Westchester Historical Society in 1929. He concluded that the site of the homestead was on the west side of the Hutchinson River in Eastchester.[110] A map in Barr's book that appeared in the 1929 work shows the property bordering the river in an area that is now called Baychester, between two creeks called Rattlesnake Brook and Black Dog Brook.[111] This area of the Bronx is now highly developed; Rattlesnake Brook is extant, mostly in underground culverts,[112] but Black Dog Brook is defunct.[113]
Death
The Hutchinsons' settlement in this area coincided with the local unrest between the Colonists and the Indians. Governor Willem Kieft had aroused the ire of the Indians with his inhumanity and treachery, according to the opinion of some modern writers.[105] Mrs. Hutchinson had a favorable relationship with the Narragansetts in Rhode Island, and she may have felt a false sense of safety among the Siwanoy of New Netherland.[105] The Hutchinsons had been friendly to them, but the Indians destroyed the New Netherland colony in a series of incidents known as Kieft's War. The fate of the Hutchinson family was summarized by LaPlante:
Sketch of a crouched woman who is sheltering a small child, with four other children nearby. The children are being attacked by seven native Americans wielding tomahawks and knives, near the doorway of a dwelling house. There is a dead or dying young man lying on the ground in the foreground.
Massacre of the Hutchinsons
The Siwanoy warriors stampeded into the tiny settlement above Pelham Bay, prepared to burn down every house. The Siwanoy chief, Wampage, who had sent a warning, expected to find no settlers present. But at one house the men in animal skins encountered several children, young men and women, and a woman past middle age. One Siwanoy indicated that the Hutchinsons should restrain the family's dogs. Without apparent fear, one of the family tied up the dogs. As quickly as possible, the Siwanoy seized and scalped Francis Hutchinson, William Collins, several servants, the two Annes (mother and daughter), and the younger children—William, Katherine, Mary, and Zuriel. As the story was later recounted in Boston, one of the Hutchinson's daughters, "seeking to escape," was caught "as she was getting over a hedge, and they drew her back again by the hair of the head to the stump of a tree, and there cut off her head with a hatchet."[114]
The warriors then dragged the bodies into the house, along with the cattle, and burned the house to the ground.[114] During the attack, Hutchinson's nine year-old daughter Susanna was out picking blueberries; she was found, according to legend, hidden in the crevice of Split Rock nearby.[115] She is believed to have had red hair, which was unusual to the Indians, and perhaps because of this curiosity her life was spared. She was taken captive, was named "Autumn Leaf" by one account,[116] and lived with the Indians for two to six years (accounts vary) until ransomed back to her family members, most of whom were living in Boston.[117]
The exact date of the Hutchinson massacre is not known. The first definitive record of the occurrence was in John Winthrop's journal, where it was the first entry made for the month of September, though not dated.[118] It took days or even weeks for Winthrop to receive the news, so the event almost certainly occurred in August 1643, and this is the date found in most sources.[118][115]
The reaction in Massachusetts to Hutchinson's death was harsh. The Reverend Thomas Weld wrote, "The Lord heard our groans to heaven, and freed us from our great and sore affliction…. I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever before this commit the like outrage upon any one family or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woeful woman".[119] Peter Bulkley, the pastor at Concord, wrote, "Let her damned heresies, and the just vengeance of God, by which she perished, terrify all her seduced followers from having any more to do with her leaven."[120]
Wampage claimed to have slain Hutchinson, and legend has it that he assumed her name after the massacre, calling himself "Anne Hoeck" to be honored by using the name of his most famous victim.[105] Eleven years after the event, he confirmed a deed transferring the Hutchinsons' property to Thomas Pell, with his name on the document being given as "Ann Hoeck alias Wampage."[105]
Historical impact
Hutchinson claimed that she was a prophetess, receiving direct revelation from God. In this capacity, she prophesied during her trial that God would send judgment upon the Massachusetts Bay Colony and would wipe it from existence.[121] She further taught her followers that personal revelation from God was as authoritative in a person's life as the Bible, a teaching that was strongly antithetical to Puritan theology. She also claimed that she could identify "the elect" among the colonists.[122] These positions ultimately caused John Cotton, John Winthrop, and other former friends to view her as an antinomian heretic.[122]
According to modern historian Michael Winship, Hutchinson is famous, not so much for what she did or said during the Antinomian Controversy, but for what John Winthrop made of her in his journal and in his account of the controversy called the Short Story. According to Winship, Hutchinson became the reason in Winthrop's mind for all of the difficulties that the colony had gone through, though inaccurately portrayed and, with her departure, any other lingering issues were swept under the carpet.[123] Winthrop's account has given Hutchinson near legendary status and, as with all legends, what exactly she stood for has shifted over the centuries.[123] Winthrop described her as "a woman of ready wit and bold spirit".[124] In the words of Winship, to Winthrop, Hutchinson was a "hell-spawned agent of destructive anarchy".[123] The close relationship between church and state in Massachusetts Bay meant that a challenge to the ministers was quickly interpreted as challenge to established authority of all kinds.[124] To 19th century America, she was a crusader for religious liberty, as the nation celebrated its new achievement of the separation of church and state. Finally, in the 20th century, she became a feminist leader, credited with terrifying the patriarchs, not because of her religious views but because she was an assertive, highly visible woman.[123] According to feminist Amy Lang, Hutchinson failed to understand that "the force of the female heretic vastly exceeds her heresy".[125] Lang argues that it was difficult for the court to pin a crime on her; her true crime in their eyes, according to Lang's interpretation, was the violation of her role in Puritan society, and she was condemned for undertaking the roles of teacher, minister, magistrate, and husband.[125] (However, the Puritans themselves clearly stated that the threat which they perceived was entirely theological, and no direct mention was ever made to indicate that they were threatened by her gender.)[126]
Winship calls Hutchinson "a prophet, spiritual adviser, mother of fifteen, and important participant in a fierce religious controversy that shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638",[127] upheld as a symbol of religious freedom, liberal thinking, and Christian feminism. Anne Hutchinson is a contentious figure, having been lionized, mythologized, and demonized by various writers. In particular, historians and other observers have interpreted and re-interpreted her life within the following frameworks: the status of women, power struggles within the Church, and a similar struggle within the secular political structure. As to her overall historical impact, Winship writes, "Hutchinson's well-publicized trials and the attendant accusations against her made her the most famous, or infamous, English woman in colonial American history."[127]
Memorials and legacy
In front of the State House in Boston, Massachusetts stands a statue of Anne Hutchinson with her daughter Susanna as a child. The statue, dedicated in 1922, has an inscription on the marble pediment that reads:
Photograph of historical plaque affixed to a rock describing Anne Hutchinnson property now in Quincy, Massachusetts
Anne Hutchinson historical plaque at Hutchinson Square, Quincy, Massachusetts, near where the Hutchinsons had a farm
A photograph of a metal statue of a woman standing upright with her head tilted upward and her eyes looking up. She is dressed in a full dress, and beside her is a young girl who is clinging on to her.
Anne Hutchinson Memorial at Massachusetts State House by Cyrus Edwin Dallin
IN MEMORY OF
ANNE MARBURY HUTCHINSON
BAPTIZED AT ALFORD
LINCOLNSHIRE ENGLAND
20 JULY 1595 [sic]
KILLED BY THE INDIANS
AT EAST CHESTER NEW YORK 1643
COURAGEOUS EXPONENT
OF CIVIL LIBERTY
AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION [128]
The memorial is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[129]
Another memorial to Hutchinson was erected south of Boston in Quincy, Massachusetts, at the corner of Beale Street and Grandview Avenue. This is near the location where the Hutchinsons owned a 600-acre farm with a house, and this is where they stayed for several days in early spring 1638 while making the trip from Boston to their new home on Aquidneck Island.[94]
Anne Hutchinson was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.[130]
Literary works
According to Hutchinson biographer Eve LaPlante, some literary critics trace the character of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter to Hutchinson's persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[131] Historian Amy Lang wrote that Hester Prynne was the embodiment of a fictional Anne Hutchinson—a Hutchinson created by the early Puritan chroniclers.[132] Lang notes that Hester was what orthodox Puritans said Hutchinson was, either in reality or at least spiritually.[132] The parallel is that Hutchinson was the heretic who metaphorically seduced the Puritan community, while in Hawthorne's novel Hester Prynne literally seduced the minister of her community.[133]
Anne Hutchinson and her political struggle with Governor Winthrop are depicted in the 1980 play Goodly Creatures by William Gibson. Other notable historical characters who appear in the play are Reverend John Cotton, Governor Harry Vane, and future Quaker martyr Mary Dyer.[134] In January 2014, Dan Shore's opera Anne Hutchinson, with libretto by William A. Fregosi and Fritz Bell, was performed twice in Boston, Massachusetts by the Intermezzo Opera Company.[135] In February 2015, researcher Claire Bellerjeau discovered and positively identified a tribute poem to Anne Hutchinson written in 1770 by Jupiter Hammon, the first published Black American poet.[136]
Namesakes
photograph of a multi-coloured carved wooden sign which reads "Anne Hutchinson/Mary Dyer Memorial Herb Garden," behind which is a scenic small waterfall surrounded by green foliage.
Anne Hutchinson/Mary Dyer Memorial Herb Garden at Founders' Brook Park, Portsmouth, Rhode Island
In southern New York, Hutchinson's most prominent namesakes are the Hutchinson River, one of the very few rivers named after a woman, and a highway, the Hutchinson River Parkway.[137] Elementary schools are named for her, such as in the Westchester County towns of Pelham and Eastchester.[138][139]
In Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Anne Hutchinson and her friend Mary Dyer, the Quaker martyr, have been remembered at Founders Brook Park with the Anne Hutchinson/Mary Dyer Memorial Herb Garden, a medicinal botanical garden set by a scenic waterfall and historical marker for the early settlement of Portsmouth.[140] The garden was created by artist and herbalist Michael Steven Ford, who is a descendant of both women. The memorial was a grass roots effort by a local Newport organisation, the Anne Hutchinson Memorial Committee headed by Newport artist Valerie Debrule. The organization is called Friends of Anne Hutchinson; it meets annually at the memorial in Portsmouth on the Sunday nearest to 20 July, the date of Anne's baptism, to celebrate her life and the local colonial history of the women of Aquidneck Island.[141] Hutchinson Hall, an underclassmen residence hall at the University of Rhode Island, is named in her honor.[142] Hutchinson is honoured together with Roger Williams with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on 5 February.[143]
Pardon
In 1987, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned Anne Hutchinson, revoking the order of banishment by Governor Winthrop 350 years earlier.[144]
Family
Immediate family
Anne and William Hutchinson had 15 children, all of them born and baptized in Alford except for the last child, who was baptized in Boston, Massachusetts.[145] Of the 14 children born in England, 11 lived to sail to New England.[145]
Painting of a balding man with grey hair. The man is wearing a highly decorated coat, and he is holding a staff of sorts.
Major Thomas Savage married Hutchinson's daughter Faith
The oldest child Edward was baptized 28 May 1613. He signed the Portsmouth Compact and settled on Aquidneck Island with his parents, but he soon made peace with the Massachusetts authorities and returned to Boston.[145] He was an officer in the colonial militia, and died from wounds received during King Philip's War. Susanna was baptised 4 September 1614 and died in Alford during the plague in 1630. Richard (baptized 8 December 1615) was admitted to the Boston church in 1634, but he returned to England and no further record has been found.[145] Faith (baptized 14 August 1617) married Thomas Savage and lived in Boston, dying about 1651.[145][146] Bridget (baptised 15 January 1618/9) married John Sanford and lived in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where her husband was briefly governor of the island; she died by 1698.[145][146]
Francis (baptized 24 December 1620) was the oldest of the children to perish in the massacre in New Netherland. Elizabeth (baptized 17 February 1621/2) died during the plague in Alford and was buried there on 4 October 1630.[145] William (baptized 22 June 1623) died during infancy. Samuel (baptized 17 December 1624) lived in Boston, married, and had a child, but left behind few records.[145] Anne (baptized 5 May 1626) married William Collins, and both of them went to New Netherland and perished in the massacre with her mother.[145] Mary (baptized 22 February 1627/8), Katherine (baptized 7 February 1629/30), William (baptized 28 September 1631), and daughter Zuriel (baptized in Boston 13 March 1635/6) were all children when they went with their mother to New Netherland, and were killed during the Indian massacre in the late summer of 1643.[145] Susanna was the 14th child of the Hutchinsons and the youngest born in England, baptized 15 November 1633. She survived the Indian attack in 1643, was taken captive, and eventually was traded to the English, after which she married John Cole and had 11 children with him.[146]
Of Hutchinson's dozen or more siblings who survived childhood, only one other came to New England; her youngest sister, Katherine, the wife of Richard Scott, came to Boston and then Providence. With her husband, Katherine was a Puritan, Baptist, and then Quaker, and was whipped in Boston for supporting her future son-in-law Christopher Holder who had his right ear cut off for his Quaker evangelism.[147]
Descendants
Photograph of a man with longish dark hair; he is wearing formal attire which consists of a dark vest, a white shirt, and a tie of the style worn in 1860.
Stephen A. Douglas was descended from Hutchinson
A number of Anne Hutchinson's descendants have reached great prominence. Among them are United States Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush,[148] as are presidential aspirants Stephen A. Douglas, George W. Romney, and Mitt Romney.[149] Her grandson Peleg Sanford was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.[150] Other descendants include Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Melville Weston Fuller and Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; Lord Chancellor of England John Singleton Copley, Jr., who was the first Lord Lyndhurst; and President of Harvard University Charles William Eliot. One descendant bearing the Hutchinson name was her ill-fated great-great-grandson Thomas Hutchinson, who was a loyalist Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay at the time of the Boston Tea Party, an event leading to the American Revolutionary War.[149]
Ancestry
In 1914, John Champlin published the bulk of the currently known ancestry of Anne Hutchinson, showing her descent on her father's side of the family from Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.[151] Gary Boyd Roberts and others have published her line of descent on her mother's side from Edward I of England, thus connecting her with Edward's great grandparents, Henry II of England and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.[152][153] Most of the material in the following ancestor chart is from Champlin, except for the Williamson line which was published in The American Genealogist by F. N. Craig in 1992.[154]
Ancestors of Anne Hutchinson
See also
Christian egalitarianism
Christian views about women
List of colonial governors of Rhode Island
Mary Dyer
References
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Anderson 2003, p. 479.
Bremer 1981, p. 1.
LaPlante 2004, p. 19.
LaPlante 2004, p. 26.
LaPlante 2004, p. 27.
LaPlante 2004, pp. 29–30.
LaPlante 2004, p. 31.
Winship 2005, p. 9.
Colket 1936, pp. 33–34.
LaPlante 2004, pp. 31–32.
LaPlante 2004, p. 34.
Bremer 1981, p. 2.
LaPlante 2004, p. 37.
LaPlante 2004, p. 85.
Hall 1990, p. 5.
LaPlante 2004, p. 86.
Hall 1990, p. x.
LaPlante 2004, pp. 86–87.
Bremer 1981, p. 3.
LaPlante 2004, p. 87.
Winship 2005, p. 7.
Champlin 1913, p. 3.
Champlin 1913, pp. 3–4.
Champlin 1913, p. 4.
LaPlante 2004, p. 156.
LaPlante 2004, p. 154.
LaPlante 2004, p. 257.
LaPlante 2004, pp. 155–156.
Bremer 1981, p. 4.
Winship 2005, p. 33.
Winship 2005, p. 35.
Winship 2005, p. 39.
Winship 2005, p. 34.
LaPlante 2004, p. 39.
Hall 1990, p. 6.
Winship 2002, p. 41.
Battis 1962, p. 105.
Bremer 1995, p. 66.
Bremer 1981, p. 5.
Winship 2002, pp. 64–69.
Winship 2002, pp. 44–45.
Winship 2002, pp. 6–7.
Anderson 2003, pp. 481–482.
Anderson 2003, p. 482.
Winship 2002, p. 86.
Winship 2002, pp. 86–89.
Winship 2002, p. 90.
Hall 1990, p. 3.
Winship 2002, p. 22.
Hall 1990, p. 4.
Bell 1876, p. 11.
Winship 2002, p. 116.
Dunn 1981, p. 143.
Winship 2002, pp. 126–148.
Winship 2002, pp. 167–168.
Winship 2002, p. 170.
Winship 2002, pp. 170–171.
Winship 2002, p. 172.
Winship 2002, p. 173.
Morris 1981, p. 60.
LaPlante 2004, p. 68.
Winship 2002, pp. 173–174.
Winship 2002, p. 175.
Winship 2002, p. 176.
Morris 1981, p. 62.
Adams 1894, p. 175.
Winship 2002, p. 177.
Winship 2002, p. 178.
Winship 2002, p. 180.
Winship 2002, pp. 181–182.
Winship 2002, p. 182.
Morris 1981, p. 63.
Winship 2002, pp. 182–183.
Winship 2002, p. 183.
Crawford 1970, pp. 144–146.
Morgan 1981, p. 57.
LaPlante 2004, p. 158.
LaPlante 2004, p. 159.
Winship 2005, p. 122.
Winship 2002, p. 197.
Battis 1962, p. 235.
Battis 1962, p. 236.
Battis 1962, p. 242.
Winship 2002, p. 202.
Battis 1962, p. 243.
Battis 1962, p. 244.
Winship 2002, p. 203.
Winship 2002, p. 204.
Winship 2002, p. 206.
Winship 2002, pp. 207–208.
Battis 1962, pp. 246–247.
Morris 1981, p. 64.
Rothbard 1975, p. 22.
LaPlante 2004, p. 208.
LaPlante 2004, p. 212.
Battis 1981, p. 16.
LaPlante 2004, p. 217.
Battis 1981, p. 17.
LaPlante 2004, p. 218.
LaPlante 2004, p. 222.
LaPlante 2004, p. 223.
Arnold 1859, p. 132.
LaPlante 2004, p. 228.
Anderson 2003, pp. 479–481.
Champlin 1913, p. 11.
Barr 1946, p. 7.
Barr 1946, p. 8.
Bolton 1922, p. 44.
Bolton, Reginald Pelham (July 1922). "The Home of Mistress Ann Hutchinson". New York Historical Society Quarterly Review. VI: 44.
Barr 1946, p. 5.
Barr 1946, pp. 28–29, plate VI.
Corbett.
New York Parks 2001.
LaPlante 2004, p. 237.
LaPlante 2004, p. 239.
Pritchard 2002, pp. 1–42.
Kirkpatrick 1998, p. 228.
Anderson 2003, pp. 479–81.
Champlin 1913, p. 12.
LaPlante 2004, p. 243.
In Puritan thinking, any prophecy that did not come true was a false prophecy, and therefore could not have come from God. The Puritan teachers and ministers in Boston would have been outraged by Hutchinson's false prophecies.
Humpherey 1919, pp. 18–29.
Winship 2005, p. 4.
Lauter 2006, p. 308.
Lang 1987, p. 65.
See David Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638, A Documentary History, 1990.
Winship 2005, p. 1.
RI Gov.
"Beacon Hill". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
"Hutchinson, Anne". National Women’s Hall of Fame. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
LaPlante 2004, p. xvii.
Lang 1987, p. 165.
Lang 1987, pp. 165–166.
Gibson 1986, p. 4.
Intermezzo Opera 2013.
Bleyer 2015.
Hutchinson River Parkway.
Pelham Patch 2012.
Anne Hutchinson School 2012.
Heritage Passage.
Herald News 2011.
"Hutchinson Hall". web.uri.edu.
Satucket Lectionary.
LaPlante 2004, p. 256.
Anderson 2003, pp. 480–481.
Kirkpatrick 1998, p. vii.
Austin 1887, p. 272.
Roberts 2009, pp. 365–366.
Family Search 2008.
Austin 1887, p. 171.
Champlin 1914, p. 18.
Roberts 2008, p. 278.
Richardson 2004, p. 492.
Anderson 2003, p. 484.
Bibliography
Adams, Charles Francis (1894). Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636–1638. Boston: The Prince Society. p. 175.
Anderson, Robert Charles (2003). The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England 1634–1635. Vol. III G-H. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 0-88082-158-2.
Arnold, Samuel Greene (1859). History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Vol.1. New York: D. Appleton & Company. p. 132.
Austin, John Osborne (1887). Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. Albany, New York: J. Munsell's Sons. ISBN 978-0-8063-0006-1.
Barr, Lockwood (1946). A brief, but most complete & true Account of the Settlement of the Ancient Town of Pelham, Westchester County, State of New York. Richmond, Virginia: The Dietz Press, Inc.
Battis, Emery (1962). Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Battis, Emery (1981). "Mrs. Hutchinson's Behavior in Terms of Menopausal Symptoms". In Bremer, Francis J. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 16–17.
Bell, Charles H. (1876). John Wheelwright. Boston: printed for the Prince Society.
Bolton, Reginald Pelham (July 1922). "The Home of Mistress Ann Hutchinson". New York Historical Society Quarterly Review. VI: 43–52.
Bremer, Francis J. (1981). Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 1–8.
Bremer, Francis J. (1995). The Puritan Experiment, New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0-87451-728-6.
Champlin, John Denison (1913). "The Tragedy of Anne Hutchinson". Journal of American History. 5 (3): 1–11.
Champlin, John Denison (1914). "The Ancestry of Anne Hutchinson". New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. XLV: 17–26.
Colket, Meredith B. (1936). The English Ancestry of Anne Marbury Hutchinson and Katherine Marbury Scott. Philadelphia: Magee Press.
Crawford, Deborah (1970). Four Women in a Violent Time. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.
Dunn, Mary Maples (1981). "Saints and Sisters". In Bremer, Francis J. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 112–123.
Gibson, William (1986). Goodly Creatures. New York: Tamarack Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8222-0462-6.
Hall, David D. (1990). The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638, A Documentary History. Durham [NC] and London: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1091-4.
Humpherey, Grace (1919). Women in American History. Freeport, New York: Bobbs-Merrill. pp. 18–29.
Kirkpatrick, Katherine (1998). Trouble's Daughter, the Story of Susanna Hutchinson, Indian Captive. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 0-385-32600-9.
LaPlante, Eve (2004). American Jezebel, the Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who Defied the Puritans. San Francisco: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-056233-1.
Lang, Amy Schrager (1987). Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05598-5.
Lauter, Paul (2006). The Heath Anthology of American Literature. A. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Morgan, Edmund S (1981). "The Case Against Anne Hutchinson". In Bremer, Francis J. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 51–57.
Morris, Richard B (1981). "Jezebel Before the Judges". In Bremer, Francis J. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. pp. 58–64.
Pritchard, Evan T. (2002). Native New Yorkers: the legacy of the Algonquin people of New York. San Francisco: Council Oak Books.
Richardson, Douglas (2004). Plantagenet Ancestry. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. pp. 492–493. ISBN 0-8063-1750-7.
Roberts, Gary Boyd (2008). The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States ... with a 2008 Addendum. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company.
Roberts, Gary Boyd (2009). Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 edition. Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society. ISBN 978-0-88082-220-6.
Rothbard, Murray (1975). "Suppressing Heresy: The Flight of Anne Hutchinson". Conceived in Liberty. 1. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House Publishers.
Winship, Michael Paul (2002). Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08943-4.
Winship, Michael Paul (2005). The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1380-3.
Online sources
Bleyer, Bill (2015). "Researcher discovers new poem by Jupiter Hammon, slave from Lloyd Harbor". Newsday.com. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
Corbett, Jim. "Rattlesnake Brook". Forgotten New York. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
Rogers, Jay (4 April 2008). "America's Christian Leaders: Anne Hutchinson". The Forerunner. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
"About our School". The Anne Hutchinson School. 2012. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
"Anne Hutchinson Day". The Herald News. 20 July 2011. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
"Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591–1643)". Rhode Island government. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
"Announcing Intermezzo's 2014 Season!". Intermezzo-opera.org. 2013. Archived from the original on 22 September 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
"Calendar of the Church Year". Satucket.com Lectionary. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
"The Daily Planet". City of New York Parks and Recreation. 19 July 2001. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
"Founders Brook Park". Newport Bristol Heritage Passage. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
"Historic Overview". Hutchinson River Parkway. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
"Howland and Hutchinson Descendant Charts". FamilySearch (LDS Church). 3 September 2008. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
"Hutchinson Elementary School". Pelham Patch. 2012. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
Further reading
Augur, Helen (1930). An American Jezebel: The Life of Anne Hutchinson. New York: Brentano's.
Bryant, William Cullen; Gay, Sydney Howard (1878). A popular history of the United States. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 457.
Curtis, Edith Roelker (1930). Anne Hutchinson: A Biography. Cambridge: Washburn & Thomas.
Ditmore, Michael G. (2000). "A Prophetess in Her Own Country: an Exegesis of Anne Hutchinson's 'Immediate Revelation". William and Mary Quarterly. 57 (2): 349–392. doi:10.2307/2674479. JSTOR 2674479. The article includes an annotated transcription of Hutchinson's "Immediate Revelation."
Gura, Philip F. (1984). A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5095-7.
Huber, Elaine C. (1985). Women and the Authority of Inspiration: A Re-examination of Two Movements from a Contemporary Feminist Perspective. Lantham, Massachusetts: University Press of America.
Lang, Amy Schrager (1987). Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05598-8.
Leonardo, Bianca; Rugg, Winifred K. (1995). Anne Hutchinson: Unsung Heroine of History. Tree of Life Publications.
Rugg, Winnifred King (1930). Unafraid: A Life of Anne Hutchinson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Williams, Selma R. (1981). Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anne Hutchinson.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Anne Hutchinson
Trial and Interrogation of Anne Hutchinson (1637)
statue info Background on the Anne Hutchinson statue; while this source gives a dedication year of 1915, most other sources give the year as 1922.
Hutchinson massacre
Sermon about Hutchinson The perspective of a modern female minister
Hutchinson marker in Quincy
Harvard's Midwife Hutchinson's connection with Harvard College
Michals, Debra. "Anne Hutchinson". National Women's History Museum. 2015.
Anne Hutchinson was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994, and the Rhode Island Women's Hall of Fame in 1997:
