library submission

ii

School of Arts and Humanities

History and Military History

The thesis for the master's degree submitted by

Tracey Reed

under the title

Anne Hutchinson: A Midwife’s Challenge

has been read by the undersigned. It is hereby recommended

for acceptance by the faculty with credit to the amount of

3 semester hours.

(Signed, first reader) (Date) April 26, 2014

(Signed, second reader, if required) _______________________ (Date) _____________

Recommended for approval on behalf of the program

(Date) April 28, 2014

Recommendation accepted on behalf of the program director

(Signed) ________ (Date) 4-28-2014

Approved by academic dean

iii

AMERICAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

Charles Town, West Virginia

ANNE HUTCHINSON: A MIDWIFE’S CHALLENGE

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

AMERICAN HISTORY

by

Tracey Reed

Department Approval Date: April 28, 2014

iv

The author hereby grants the American Public University System the right to display these contents for educational purposes.

The author assumes total responsibility for meeting the requirements set by United States copyright law for the inclusion of any materials that are not the author’s creation or in the public domain.

© Copyright 2014 by Tracey Reed

All rights reserved.

v

DEDICATION

I dedicate this thesis to my son Michael and daughter Heather whose love is one of the

driving forces in my will to succeed; my grateful thanks is abundantly scattered between them. I

also dedicate this to my parents the late Donald and Martha Wright for all those visits to old

cemeteries and National Parks. My deepest appreciation goes to the faculty of the History

Department at American Military University who taught me not only how to research history,

but to truly love history.

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to my husband Steven Reed who was my greatest champion through the

long nights and endless book piles in our home as I concluded my studies. I wish to thank my

late uncle the Reverend Gerald G. Wright and his wife Eileen Wright of Oxford, England whose

words of encouragement inspired me to get an education no matter how long it took. Gerald’s

words: “Tracey, the world only cares that you are educated, not how many years it takes you to

get it.” A truer statement could not be spoken. Much appreciation goes to Dr. Lisa Carswell who

pushed me and encouraged me tremendously; a mentor and a friend who was always there before

I even knew I needed her. Finally, Dr. John Drozd for his helpful guidance and editing of my

many drafts; no matter how busy he was with his medical practice.

vii

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

ANNE HUTCHINSON: A MIDWIFE’S CHALLENGE

by

Tracey Reed

American Public University System, April 28, 2014

Charles Town, West Virginia

Professor Brett Woods, Thesis Professor

The following is a study of Anne Hutchinson’s emergence from midwife to prophetess

and heretic in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. An examination of Hutchinson as the most

conspicuous woman of her time in Colonial America is the story of a midwife who created the

first women’s reading club in her colony. Existing historiography contains ample evidence to

support the contention that her role as midwife and healer impacted the results of both her civil

and ecclesiastical trials. The authorities in the colony were frightened by midwives because there

was a strong connection between what the colonial fathers called “the community of women.”

The background of Hutchinson and her religious beliefs will be examined in context with the

Antinomian Controversy. Hutchinson’s and other Colonial women’s midwifery skills are

explored and tie into the followership founded with the women taught in her home. Her trial and

life will be reviewed and analyzed against the background of Puritan New England through the

writings of the magistrates and clergy. The definition of her life as midwife will show the impact

of this role in her sentencing for teaching heresy and later excommunication from the church.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1

I. PURITAN MIDWIFE ANNE HUTCHINSON FORMS THE FIRST WOMEN’S BOOK CLUB IN COLONIAL AMERICA……………………………………………………...12

II. THE MIDWIFE STANDS TRIAL…................................................................................36

III. THE CHURCH SPEAKS FOR ITSELF………………………………………………...52

IV. MRS. HUTCHINSON MAKES HISTORY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS…………....65

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………..72

APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………79

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………..94

1

Introduction

In front of the State House in Boston is a memorial to Anne Hutchinson created by Cyrus

E. Dallin.1 Her statue portrays her head held high and proud with one hand holding a Bible, and

the other resting on the shoulder of her young daughter.2 The irony of history is that her statue

occupies 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.

Cyrus Edwin Dallin, Anne Hutchinson, 1915, Massachusetts State House, on south lawn near Beacon and Bow streets, Boston, accessed April 1, 2014, http://www.publicartaroundtheworld.com/Anne_Hutchinson_Statue.html.

On November 2, 1637 she had stood before the court as an ordinary-looking woman of

forty-six. She was the sum of many parts to include wife, mother of twelve children, active 1 Amy Schrager Lang, Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent

in the Literature of New England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 215.

2 Emery John Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 247.

2

member of the Congregationalist Church, and a midwife.3 The issues which brought her before

the court were complicated but she represented a convergence of circumstances and problems for

which the colony and its inhabitants were not properly prepared to face. The end result would be

a clash of Hutchinson’s will against those of the colony’s magistrates and clergy. She and her

followers would later give birth to a whole new settlement in Rhode Island and Hutchinson

would take her place in history as one of America’s founding mothers.

Why was Anne Hutchinson excommunicated from church and banished from the

Massachusetts Bay Colony for her interpretation and teaching of the Bible? Why were the

authorities so frightened by midwives, and what was the connection between midwifery and

what the magistrates called “the community of women . . . their abominable wickedness?”4

While this was not the first trial regarding dissension among the Puritans it revealed overlapping

tensions regarding female conduct and how the magistrates of the colony dealt with these

tensions with regard to midwifery. The clergy were unaccustomed to debating with a woman

and appear nonplussed in trial transcripts to have such a challenge to their authority. Therefore

the very order of nature in the Puritan society was turned upside down, for no one expected a

challenge from a mere woman whose occupation was that of a midwife.

The central thesis of this work will focus on an examination of Hutchinson’s life as a

midwife within New England’s Puritan culture where she formed the first women’s reading

group; their book was the Bible. In a culture where childbirth and healing were largely exclusive

of men, it was in the birthing rooms of women that Hutchinson first began interpreting the

gospel. She stepped out of the social norms of healer and midwife to interpret the Scriptures to

3 Michael P. Winship, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 103.

4 Battis, 239.

3

women in the privacy of her own home. According to the mores of her time she then was put

swiftly and irrevocably back in her place by the court and church. No woman in Massachusetts

during this era would achieve fame so quickly nor fall so fast in just three years’ time.

With the modern trend in childbirth using midwives for home delivery, midwifery is

receiving more attention today. Colonial midwives had a history of being suspect for their

knowledge of herbal medicine and a strong woman like the educated Hutchinson was a threat to

the society of men in the colony. The extent and impact of Hutchinson’s behaviors as a midwife

who taught other women affected the magistrates who later assessed such harsh punishment over

her. This provides a strong connection to the overall treatment of midwives during this time.

Historians place her in the forefront of the Antinomian Controversy with many observations

including her only as the sole women among the men. There were many other women who

concurred with Hutchinson’s teachings but this midwife was tried in both civil court and the

church. Hutchinson was considered by all accounts an intelligent woman with a quick mind, wit

and tremendous self-possession for a woman who found herself the subject of heresy for

criticizing the sermons in the colony. On that cold November day as she stood before Governor

John Winthrop’s court in a Cambridge, Massachusetts meetinghouse she was considered a

menace as a woman who unduly influenced other women to neglect their families. She had been

summoned to appear and answer for the crime of heresy, and now faced a group of black robed

magistrates from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had no sympathy for a midwife who

decided to preach.

An examination of Hutchinson’s revelations and prophecy that were passed on to others

while she was performing her midwife duties prove how a woman could so incense the males of

the colony that they would banish her to the wilderness. Interpretations of the controversy

4

surrounding her emphasize her first teachings while in the company of woman. My study will

examine the theory that through gossip with other women within the colony Hutchinson opened

theological issues to women who had not been allowed to speak before. She explained other

minister’s sermons and their meanings. Sharing with the women of prophecies and revelations

from the Scriptures enabled her to step outside her boundaries as midwife. Consequently, she

was punished for behavior not fitting her sex and what was expected of a midwife at this time.

Before Hutchinson began the behavior that would give her preeminence in the annals of

American religious dissenters she was known as the wife of William; an esteemed member of the

colony. She was well known as a healer and midwife with considerable skills at interpreting the

Bible. Her civil and church trials for contempt and doctrinal error were what made her a central

figure in the Antinomianism Controversy and the leader of the Hutchinsonian followers. But she

did not arrive there alone on the strength of her revelations. She inspired people to listen to her.

Though she later expanded her reading group to include many men she was charged by

Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop not only for questioning the church

minister’s preaching of a Covenant of Works but more important in Winthrop eyes for causing

women to neglect their families.5 Due to the lower status of women at the time, early influential

females left few correspondence, journals, or published works; unless provided within the

context of a more famous husband such as Abigail Adams. Among published works of females

there are the brief “Valedictory and Monitory Writing” of Sarah Goodhue, the captivity

narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Elisabeth Hanson, and the poetry of Anne Bradstreet.

Hutchinson historians know her character primarily through the trial transcripts and documents

of her time in the colony of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The journals of Governor

5 Mark C. Carnes, Michael P. Winship, The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law, and Intolerance in Puritan New England, 2d ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), 67.

5

Winthrop are crucial in establishing the timeline and general feelings of the colony toward

Hutchinson but they are obviously biased. Winthrop and others leant toward their suppressed

opinion that she was in concert with the Devil for her views; a feeling provoked largely by her

midwifery skills and failure to bear full term children while in her late forties.

Written documentation of the controversy and extensive historiography of her are easily

found, but must be examined and weighed carefully against the prejudices of midwives in

general. The documents of the Antinomian Controversy and her place in the historical context of

the controversy were carefully maintained in journals of governors, magistrates and clergy

during the 1630s. Oral history was transferred from the women to their men and Hutchinson

spoke among her elders of the church with like-minded ideas. But it is men who wrote

profoundly about her and it is clearly evident she was famous not only for her part in the charges

of Antinomianism, but because she was an educated midwife who annoyed her male elders.

The problem with the male-dominated documentation is that the eyewitness accounts

inevitably portray her as a troublemaker. The most distinguished men of Massachusetts were not

impartial observers. Nor did they know anything about the binding ties of women who faced

uncertain futures on the frontiers. Furthermore, they were completely ignorant of how much a

good midwife and healer provided for the physical, moral and spiritual health of a colonist’s

family. An examination of the trial proves that when the magistrates could not convince

Hutchinson to find fault with her teachings and doctrinal errors; they could always fall back on

the mysteries of her womanhood and her midwifery.

In addition, the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the 1630s was concerned with pleasing the

Crown in England, land expansion and its religious conduct. Within this context the colony

would be worried about developing their land, furthering peace with the Amerindians and the

6

religious doctrine for which they had initially left England to establish. Two of the qualities that

defined the colony were the community’s severe religiosity and its vulnerability. From both

within and without, the colony fought to maintain its freedom from England and its very

existence from the Amerindian foes on their shores. Therefore the colony was paranoid of any

divisions that might undermine its need for a united front.6 Hutchinson was a woman who dared

to question the foundations that kept the colony together and at one time her very presence was

considered dangerous by the governor and others to the peace and unity of the church. It was

important that any controversy within the colony’s church not reach England’s shores.

Massachusetts Bay was more settled than its outlying neighbors and with more time on their

hands; they seemed to find it necessary to meddle in church and religious affairs. Religion was a

huge driving force in the colony since most of its founders left England because of difficulties

with Anglican Church doctrine.

In examining the case of Hutchinson’s accusations and subsequent trials the literature

used is broken into two groups: primary materials which contain her trial transcripts and

firsthand accounts of the controversy, and secondary materials which provide the historiography

of Hutchinson’s trial during the New England Puritan culture. Information regarding

Hutchinson’s excommunication from the church and trial for heresy is derived from primary

sources. There are many easily accessible sets of primary sources on the Antinomian

Controversy, including David Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A

Documentary History, 2d ed. (Durham, NC, 1990); Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia

Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop (Cambridge, MA, 1996); and Sargent Bush Jr., ed.,

The Correspondence of John Cotton, 1621-1652 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001). These books contain

major reexamination of the controversy and provide details of Hutchinson’s physical condition

6 Battis, 63.

7

during her trial. Historian David Hall studied her role in the controversy at length in his books

on the Antinomians and acknowledges that the controversy in Massachusetts started with her.

But his works are largely influenced by what the men of that time wrote about Antinomianism.

The Antinomians believed that one’s conduct in life was no test of divine entrance into

heaven, whether it was the wearing of plain clothes, sober speech or bearing. A Covenant of

Grace brought about by the spirit of God in one’s inner life could testify to a safe passage into

heaven. Hutchinson and others taught that holiness consisted in a state of heart and not always in

good works. She upheld a Covenant of Grace based on a direct revelation of God’s grace and

love which she claimed came to her as a prophecy through her reading of the scriptures. While

this did not discourage a decent life and observance of the Sabbath it did put all good works in a

subordinate place as the fruits of such labor, rather than the proof of a believing heart. This is

what Hutchinson believed and taught to the women of the colony.

Literature which contains responses to Antinomianism are extremely valuable in

researching the era in which Hutchinson shared her beliefs. Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working

Providence, 1628-1651 (London, 1654, New York, 1959); and William Hubbard’s, A General

History of New England (Boston, 1848) contain invaluable historical perspective. Another is

Cotton Mather, though not a contemporary of Hutchinson he published the Magnalia Christi

Americana (London, 1702; reprinted Hartford, 1853) which is a significant source of information

about the Antinomians.

A guide to the historiography of New England culture during the time of the Antinomian

controversy is contained in the lengthy and written account of Hutchinson and her trial by Emery

Battis in his Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill, NC, 1962). Battis wrote the fullest account of the

8

controversy though parts are marred by an unsubstantiated interpretation of Hutchinson.

However, there is much valuable information if you ignore Battis’ idea that Hutchinson suffered

from menopause and a weak husband. Since Hutchinson’s trial has lengthy literature, Battis’

account is useful in breaking down the colony’s justice and punishment systems.

Historiography of Hutchinson’s life is also derived from excellent secondary sources.

The best interpretation is Michael P. Winship’s The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson

(Lawrence, Kansas, 2005) and Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in

Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton, New Jersey, 3003). Both of Winship’s books provide

excellent views of Hutchinson as fluent in the topics of spiritualty and theology and recalls how

she successfully used these traits along with her association with Cotton to achieve status in New

England. In Making Heretics Winship provides a learned study of the controversy and the

Hutchinsonians place in the history of Antinomians. The Times and Trials contains the best

analysis of her trial which can be combined with the actual transcripts to confirm the religious

intolerance of her era. His concise retelling of her history provides the details necessary to

understand the woman and midwife she was. The figure of John Winthrop permeates

Hutchinson’s throughout her life in Massachusetts. Edmund S. Morgan provides the best

treatment of a general interpretation of Puritanism from Winthrop’s viewpoint in The Puritan

Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston, 1958).

Marty Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming

of American Society (New York: 2004) analyses the role gender assumptions played in both of

her trials. Some historians take Norton’s view the trial was a sham from the start. Did

Hutchinson simply talk too much out of turn and then in the excitement of her free grace feelings

go on to further explorations which led to harsher punishments? Ann Fairfax-Withington and

9

Jack Schwartz, “The Political Trial of Anne Hutchinson,” New England Quarterly 51 (1978) is a

noteworthy article which expands to cover midwife and gender assumptions. The assumption

about gender being a factor in Hutchinson’s trial is entwined with the assumptions about the

power of midwifery during this period. While gender assumption was explored during the early

feminist driven studies of 1970s and 1980s in the writing and research of Hutchinson’s life, the

subject of midwifery is not just a part of the gender question but stands alone as a larger aspect

of the suspicion Hutchinson was cast under in the colony. While important as extraneous

reading to the understanding of the era Hutchinson lived in, gender analysis is not the sole basis

for this thesis though it plays a part in understanding the midwife role.

Ben Barker Benfield, “Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude to Women,” Feminist

Studies 1 (1973); Lyle Koehler, “The Cast of the American Jezebels: Anne Hutchinson and

Female Agitation During the Years of the Antinomian Turmoil, 1636-1640,” William and Mary

Quarterly, 3d ser., (1974); and Amy Schrager Lang, Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and

the Problem of Dissent in New England Literature (Berkeley, 1987) have substantial sections

which provide accounts of Hutchinson’s actions during her time in Massachusetts. Research

from these books provide that Hutchinson was not always the central figure of the controversy

though she was outspoken. For example, the previous governor of the colony Sir Henry Vane

and Reverend John Wheelwright are among the more famous supporters though there is much

focus on Hutchinson.

The historiography of midwifery in early colonial America is found in many accounts

from Carol F. Karlsen’s The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Witchcraft in Colonial New

England (New York, 1998); Ruth Plimpton’s, Mary Dyer: Biography of a Rebel Quaker

(Boston, 1994); Amanda Porterfield’s, Female Piety in Puritan New England (New York,

10

1992); and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in

Northern New England (New York, 1991). From these sources are derived the problems of

women who practice midwifery in the colonial period.

As the reader moves away from the controversy of Antinomianism, Hutchinson’s

personal history emerges. Housekeeping, childbearing and ordinary churchgoing, albeit with the

challenges of early colonial life and combined with frankness of speech defines Anne

Hutchinson. This thesis intends to address the appeal of Hutchinson speaking frankly to the

ladies first, and not focus solely on the trials that followed afterward except to use them as a

context for how she was treated by the men in power. That she had her own “book club” through

association with midwifery before she became known as a dissenter and heretic is an important

footnote in her life. Sometimes the pots and pans history of women is where the real story lies.

For decades, historiography of colonial America often focused on men. The documents

of the Antinomian Controversy and Anne Hutchinson’s place in the historical context of the

controversy still fascinate historians nearly four-hundred years after her civil and church trials

for contempt of church doctrine. Her offenses led to her banishment and excommunication

which requires a closer look at her primary task in the colony as a midwife. Because it is men

who wrote profoundly about her; it is evident that she was later famous not only for her part in

Antinomianism but because she was an educated midwife.

In colonial times the profile of a typical woman tried for witchcraft was one of a suspect

group known for making special remedies, providing nursing and serving as midwives. The

underlying link here is obvious; the ability to heal and the ability to harm seemed intimately

related. What cannot be explained as a woman’s right to interpret the scriptures must therefore

be explained as a woman being led astray by evil forces. Clearly the wisest course for

11

Hutchinson was to blend in and not seem too openly self-assertive. To behave otherwise was to

open herself to suspicion within the community. Accusing a woman such as Hutchinson of

being misguided and banished from the colony was a sheer waste of her talent and knowledge.

The women of Boston were consequently deprived of her healing and midwifery skills. Instead,

what could have been a proud occupation for Hutchinson and a field for lively intellectual

inquiry was discredited by Governor Winthrop and others.

Hutchinson’s life as a midwife and prophetess is a cautionary tale. Her history and story

is an exploration of the lives that midwives and healers led in early Colonial America. Clearly

she was an individual first, one who left her comfortable home in England for conscience’s sake

and persuaded her family to come to America. There she collided with the clergy and was

expelled from the colony she first called home. She later helped to found a freer settlement in a

new wilderness in Rhode Island, and after her husband died she moved to another area where she

perished with almost all her family at the hands of the Amerindians. Her story is a unique one

for any woman but her ability to form a reading club with the women of her colony is substantial

reason for examining her history.

Chapter IPuritan Midwife Anne Hutchinson Forms the First Women’s Book Club in America

It was among her female neighbors in need of medical skills that Hutchinson first

communicated her controversial religious ideas. Puritan doctrine did not allow women a wide

sphere of influence except within the mysteries of childbirth and nursing since men were usually

excluded from this womanly form of healing and gossip. Affairs which were typically female

such as childbirth provided a freedom for women to speak their mind in which the male

dominion was not present. While still living in London, the young Anne Marbury, later

12

Hutchinson assisted her mother during the births of three of her siblings: Thomas, born in 1606;

Anthony, in 1608; and Katherine in 1610. The experience contributed directly to her later career

as a midwife and nurse and her refusal to accept the church’s doctrine that innocent infants were

all born in original sin.7

Hutchinson was born in Alford, England to Francis and Bridget Marbury on July 17,

1591.8 Her father was a deacon in Northampton and previously imprisoned for his preaching,

released and again arrested. He was later reinstated and sent to a church in London with his wife

and children. Marbury was primarily guilty of criticizing the unworthiness of other ministers

and was considered a radical Puritan and non-conformist. He wanted to abolish all the pomp and

ceremony of the Church of England.9

At the time of Hutchinson’s birth, Queen Elizabeth had reigned for almost thirty-three

years in spite of the many Catholic plots by the French and Scots to overthrow her. England was

known as a powerful Protestant country and had been continually engaged in expensive warfare

against Catholic enemies since 1585. English adventurers and visionaries planned a great

Protestant empire in North America. The population of England continued to rise rapidly and

work was in short supply. For many of England’s inhabitants the prospect of starting over in

New England with greater religious freedom and less strife was very appealing. Puritan agitation

was high during the 1580s and Elizabeth stopped her parliament in their efforts to reform the

Church of England along the puritan lines.10

7 Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton, NJ: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 35-37.

8 Winship, Times and Trials, 6.

9 Winship, Times and Trials, 7-8.

10 Winship, Making Heretics, 14-15.

13

The majority of Elizabethan Protestants believed that God restricted women’s calling to

the domestic sphere, where they should cultivate their spiritual lives as wives and mothers.

Hutchinson’s mother would have introduced her daughter to the art of nursing the sick and

midwifery. These skills were valued in an age when doctors were few and medical knowledge

sketchy. While she would continue to learn from her mother as a young woman she took part in

religious activities as approved by the puritans. Weekday lectures and periodic fast and

thanksgiving days were appropriate to the occasion. She would likely find these activities

stimulating rather than boring. In this setting she gained her familiarity with a wide range of

Protestant opinion on the finer points of religious dispute.11

In the first decade of Hutchinson’s life she obtained her religious instruction from her

father who exercised many concerns about England’s religious situation and how it would soon

change. Queen Elizabeth was dying and it was expected that the Stuart King, James VI of

Scotland who was Presbyterian would assume the English throne upon her death. However,

when he became James I of England in 1603 he dashed the hopes of the Puritans. In order to

ensure obedience of puritans, the Church of England in 1604 instituted a requirement that all

clergymen swear that they believed every aspect of the church’s government was agreeable to

the Bible. The strictest of the nonconforming puritans such as Hutchinson’s father Marbury

would not take the oath.12

During the time of James I’s reign women were embracing Puritanism. Many married

women, under the domination of their husbands in accordance with law, displayed their own

independence by pursuing underground activities such as assisting in distributing printed tracts

11 David Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1999) 19.


14

which they hid from their spouses. The King’s opinion of women reflected long-standing

expressed fears that women were untrustworthy, conspiratorial creatures who at every given

chance would attempt to establish their own devotional cults. The King and his bishops

reiterated that midwives must never be allowed to baptize newborns, even when no priest was

available or when the baby was on the verge of death. He further degreed that only licensed

ministers could be allowed to preach. These proclamations touched Hutchinson’s life only

subtly at first, but would later affect her both personally and professionally in her midwife

career.13 One of the very first pieces of legislation that the King called on Parliament to enact

was a stiff new witchcraft statute. The 1604 law made witchcraft punishable by hanging and in

case there was any lingering doubt as to the sex of witches James I reissued his best-selling witch

tract, Daemonologie, published in Scotland in 1597.14 This was the atmosphere of Hutchinson’s

youth as she entered into womanhood.

In August 1612 she married her former neighbor William Hutchinson.15 Her keen mind

continued to be intrigued by what other learned ministers of the day such as Reverend John

Cotton and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright preached. Hutchinson became more certain

that the New World was the only answer for her freedom of belief. Her mysticism and prophecy

divined from the Bible convinced her that she was tasked to follow them: “Nothing great ever

befel me that was not made known to me beforehand.”16 While in England Hutchinson lived

13 Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 (New York: T. Y. Crowell Co., 1968), 105-106.

14 Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I” Journal of British Studies 24, no. 2 (April 1985): 169-207, accessed April 1, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/175702.


16 Timothy D. Hall, Anne Hutchinson: Puritan Prophet, ed. Mark C. Carnes (Boston: Longman, 2010) 42.

15

about twenty miles from Cotton who was a skillful orator and minister. He refused to wear the

surplice, use the cross in baptism, or compel communicants to kneel for the sacrament. He

attracted many at his parish in St. Botolph’s with his ideas of purity in worship. Hutchinson was

certain he provided her with an interpretation of her revelations about current church dogma.

She admired his preaching, especially his emphasis on experiencing the divine and she

regarded any minister who taught differently than he as deluded. She knew her Bible in great

detail and viewed Bible verses that came into her mind as revelations from God giving her

spiritual insights and even glimpses into the future. She read the scriptures and received

revelations and prophecies which were revealed to her through her own reflections. Further, she

believed that proof of God’s salvation was revealed by Scripture which caused a sudden feeling

of love and joy. People who had the same experiences as Hutchinson’s were sealed to Christ and

became one of His saints. She often claimed that if she had a half hour’s talk with a man, she

would be able to tell if he were among the saved or not.17

In England Hutchinson was pregnant every fifteen to twenty-three months and often

unable to appear in Church so she began following the example of Reverend Cotton by holding

meetings at her own home. She discussed her own personal reinterpretations of the scriptures.

She spoke to the women she knew through child birthing sessions or had nursed their families

through illness. Her skill as a midwife was already bringing her new contacts; a way of

maintaining a rapport with the women around her whom she hoped to awaken to new ideas with

her own revelations of the scripture. Hutchinson worked alongside her mother and learned

herbal ointments, salves and medicines for nursing the sick back to health. Mothers-to-be placed

themselves in Hutchinson’s steady hands counting on her skill rather than superstition to deliver

17 Carnes, Winship, 27.

16

their children. These large and devoted followers attested to her success in her chosen calling as

midwife and spiritual healer.

Reverend Cotton later sailed to New England aboard the Griffin. The other travelers with

Cotton included the Hutchinsons’ twenty-one year old son Edward their oldest child, as well as

another Edward Hutchinson who was William’s youngest brother.18 The Hutchinsons

themselves set sail as an entire family for the American colonies in the summer of 1634 on the

same vessel that had brought Cotton the year before. They left England largely in order to

remain parishioners of Reverend Cotton for Hutchinson had known no other minister who able to

follow the logic of salvation more convincingly than Cotton. During the voyage Hutchinson

found herself at odds with the Reverend Zechariah Symmes.19 Their dislike of each other was

mutual. Hutchinson and others endured long sermons from Symmes in which he denigrated the

women. During one of their arguments she put forth the revelation that they would be at New

England within three weeks. Her forecast proved accurate and Symmes decided that on arrival

he would report the story to the authorities. This he did, which delayed her entry into the Church

of Boston but she ultimately overcame this with the support of Reverend Cotton who wielded

tremendous influence over the colony.

She made no secret of the fact she had come three thousand miles over water for the sake

of seeing Reverend Cotton and listening again to his sermons. The Hutchinsons were well

known upon landing in America and entered Boston society under Cotton’s wing, who had no

suspicion that they were going to cause him so much trouble. Their first sight of land when they

18 David Hall, 19.


17

docked on September 18, 1634 was the church meetinghouse; the main building in town and

soon to be the focal point of Hutchinson’s life.

The meetinghouse played a large role in all of the colony’s life. The colony was formed

by men who did not conform to the rituals and government of the Anglican Church in England.

Many were followers of John Calvin who taught a great simplicity of life. Citizens of the colony

and their behaviors were closely guarded by the clergy and magistrates. All frivolous

amusements were forbidden, a curfew was established, and everyone was expected to save their

souls and labor for the further development of the colony. The minister of the colony wielded

great control over the life of his followers.

The leading minister of the colony was Reverend Richard Mather who preached against

stage plays and card playing. Despite the wealth of some of the newcomers to the colony there

was still an antagonism toward the finer things of life that help to lighten the burden of just

existing and which justify life itself. The New England Puritans only allowed themselves one

full holiday in the course of the year and that was Thanksgiving Day, a time for feasting. There

was a Fast Day in the spring which gave freedom from work but that was a day for sermons at

the meetinghouse. The celebration of Christmas was not observed by the true New England

Puritans until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Books found in the average family were the Bible, the Psalm Book, an almanac, school

primer and sermons by the ministers of the day. The hardships were many since there was much

sickness. While it has been recorded that everyone was obliged to go to church, the size of the

meetinghouses, the isolated locations of many of the houses, and care of numerous younger

children show the statement could not be taken literally by the women. Here Hutchinson would

18

flourish since she could recall the sermons and repeat with her own opinions what was said in the

meetinghouses to those women confined to outlying farms or too sick to attend church.

The house that her husband built in Boston was spacious enough to later hold the crowd

of followers who would congregate at her meetings and was on the same street as the former

Governor, John Winthrop. She plunged into the life of her community and appeared popular

though it must be noted that Winthrop, father of the colony was not enthusiastic about her. He

does not mention her in his journals until he has something unfavorable to report. Winthrop was

her nearest neighbor and held great political power in New England.

Winthrop writes of “one Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman

of a ready wit and 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.”20 Further mention of Hutchinson can be found at the same time in Johnson’s

Wonder-Working Providence: “She was a woman of kind heart and practical capacity of various

kinds, possessed, too, of a fervent spirit and an intellect so keen that she was held to be the

masterpiece of woman’s wit.”21 There were many other friendships Hutchinson could call on in

the colony. Sir Henry Vane, son of the King’s Privy councilor in England and later to become

governor of the colony became acquainted with the Hutchinsons through Cotton’s friends. He

believed as Hutchinson did that people could be inspired by God and that truth was revealed to

Christians as it had been revealed to the prophets of old.22

20 John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal. Vol. 1 of The History of New England 1630-1649, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 195.

21 Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence, 1628-1651, 1st ed. Reprint. ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959), 127.

22 David Hall, 18-19.

19

In addition to friendships formed through church, Hutchinson’s arrival in the colony had

the advantage of making the acquaintance of neighbors in which she could use her nursing skills.

She found her expertise of medicinal herbs and roots learned while in England to be needed in

the new world. At the time there were only three other healers in the colony. Thomas Oliver, an

elder of the church and a surgeon, and William Dinely a barber-surgeon who routinely pulled

teeth, applied leeches and trimmed hair. But the most colorful member of the local medical

profession and one who would follow, albeit sometimes unsteadily in Hutchinson’s footsteps

was Jane Hawkins, a midwife. Hawkins’ healing devices and manner prompted rumors of

familiarity with the devil and she was rejected for church membership. Eager for acceptance,

she embraced Hutchinson even though Hawkins was known for providing the “physicks” of the

community: equal parts faith healing and dabbling with herbs to either end or conceive childbirth

among the women.23

Jane Hawkins is linked largely to Hutchinson’s support as a heretic under the suspicion of

witchcraft. Since she was not a church member, she had the least status in the community. She

was allowed to listen to church sermons at Hutchinson’s meetings which was a huge attraction to

Hawkins but she was looked askance by other elders of the colony. According to Governor

Winthrop Hawkins was known “to give young women oil of mandrake and other stuff to cause

conception,” and “grew into great suspicion to be a witch, for it was credibly reported that when

she gave any medicines she would ask the party, if she did believe, she could help her, etc.”24

23 Battis, 84.

24 Winthrop, 268.

20

Later her reputation was brought into Hutchinson’s civil trial only after the decision was made to

rid the colony of Hutchinson and others who persisted in heretical opinions.25

Women healers were long under the threat of male suspicion of their talents. Women

such as Hutchinson worked with nature, encouraging the vital spirit rather than attacking disease

with bleeding by leeches or other deadly remedies. Her spiritualism that the body was enthralled

with Christ’s love made her an excellent healer and herbalist, often working from her own

intuition. She would prescribe painkillers and anesthetics among her herbal remedies to mitigate

the suffering of women during childbirth. This was in direct opposition to the teachings of the

church that taught the pain women suffered during childbirth was Eve’s curse and not to be

interfered with.

Midwifery involved women whose work touched them daily on matters of life and death.

Colonial woman were responsible for the health of their families and medical knowledge was

handed down from mother to daughter. In the colonies it was understood that witchcraft was

passed on as well. However, in Hutchinson’s case though she was called many things in the

name of her religious beliefs it is likely that she was particularly susceptible to witchcraft

suspicion. Many midwives frequently fell under suspicion, though the skills that made women

of the colony suspect were the very skills needed to care for their families. Informal witchcraft

accusations were later made against Hutchinson and Hawkins, and insinuations made about Dyer

after Hutchinson’s civil trial. Though none of these women were officially tried as a witch and

witchcraft was never mentioned in any of the actions taken against them, a taint still lingered.

Their stories, if interrelated do reveal much about how some of the colony viewed midwifery

skills.

25 Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998) 14-15.

21

Throughout the centuries it was accepted that woman are healers and connected to each

other through their ability to create life. Church beliefs at the time perceived women to be earthy

while men were believed to be closer to God and holders of the spiritual truth. For Hutchinson

the midwife to teach, violated this basic tenet for the church tried hard to regulate the natural

world and order the spiritual world. Here she differed from other women of her ilk for she was

more open and willing to challenge and confront men. To the Puritan men with a rigid view of

how women should act such freedom was terrifying and dangerous. It disrupted their world and

Hutchinson’s own revelations regarding her interpretations of religion were seen as a corrupting

influence on other women.

Traditionally at this time midwifery had been one area in which women had some power,

and the only training for those wishing to study midwifery was by apprenticeship. Many gained

their skills solely by observation. In England where Hutchinson was born, it was customary

when a woman started in labor to send for neighbors. This was partly to bear witness to the

child’s birth and partly to spread the knowledge of midwifery since in an emergency any woman

might be called on to minister to the mother and baby. Hutchinson’s abilities as a nurse and

midwife went back almost three decades to her teenaged years in London. Her sick patients

always felt better and mothers and newborn infants under her care almost always came through

in good condition.

As a midwife she was able to move freely about the community and could talk at will

about whatever she chose. This was a powerful incentive to choose the Bible as a book to

discuss, dissect and learn new meanings about spiritual enhancement of one’s soul. She did not

hesitate to use these tools to her advantage to help the women in her community. She cultivated

a throng of admirers who were bound to her by gratitude. There was much sickness in the

22

colony and there were always more babies being born. Her reputation for wisdom in the hour of

a woman’s need brought healing; not only her tinctures and broths, but her soft dispensation of

what was preached by ministers.

As Hutchinson ministered good works among the sick it was natural woman should open

their minds to her and talk without fear of reprisal. Woman spoke of their illness, Puritan

husbands, their children, the laws that took away their possessions, and the bitter winters. They

also discussed the Puritan clothing and strictures they were under. For example, the Reverend

Roger Williams preached that women should go veiled, but Reverend Cotton preached against

this. What Hutchinson thought was of great interest to these women.

Her charitable attitude and solicitude won her the affection of the female community. At

the bedsides of the sick and child bearing she aided in their recovery both physical and spiritual.

As she inquired about their faith she also found that many had been trusting good deeds in a

good life as evidence of salvation. She felt this to be a spirit of bondage to Puritan work ethics.

Without holding Christ in their heart, many women expected to ascend to heaven based on their

good works on earth and had long given up their souls to this idea.

Hutchinson brought these topics into the open, giving women a change to express

themselves. No better expression lay in the news that a neighbor’s baby was on the way and she

was called. The mother would want spiritual comfort as well as physical. This she could do

with great conviction unmindful of what the ministers might say about God’s elect. She

preached a doctrine of love and sanctification by faith to her sisters in the colony and her views

were now bordering on antinomianism. Her revelations revealed that God’s gift of grace

relieved women of responsibility for obeying moral laws of the Old Testament. After

Hutchinson left their home, many a thoughtful woman repeated to her husband what she learned.

23

These words were compared with ministers such as Reverend Cotton’s. The word spread from

house to house via private conversations which started with Hutchinson and went from wife to

husband and later to friends and neighbors.

Hutchinson would meditate on the meagerness of social intercourse and inspiration for

the women of the colony and she sought to prove that she could solve this problem. Nursing was

often conducted in ill-heated houses under distasteful circumstances which might not be

conducive to the best discussions of the Bible. She decided she would hold meetings in her own

house and hold them particularly for women. This would give the women something of their

own in a new country; a chance to learn and talk among themselves. Women need a community

of their own. Members of the colony attended church twice on Sunday and once on Thursday

lecture day. For the people of Boston this was the only devotional exercise authorized or

permitted by the state.26 Families separated at the door of the meetinghouse, women on one side

and men on the other facing the Reverend Cotton, minister to the church of Boston.

The neighborhood prayer meetings were often overlooked by Hutchinson herself due to

her nursing and spiritual exercises. Soon her absences made her conspicuous and she became a

target for local gossip. Reverend Cotton visited her, and since she was a learned female the

seeds were planted that she could teach the gospel herself as well as anyone else could at the

neighborhood prayer meetings. She innocently began to repeat Cotton’s sermons to others along

with her own explanations when confusion arose as to what the Reverend had meant.

Hutchinson began her meetings with the women of the colony slowly and informally. At

first she met once a week with only five or six women. Her sole purpose at the time was to

discuss the latest sermon of Cotton. Later her audiences grew larger as women in Boston and

neighboring towns attended as well. The first handful of women who appeared in her parlor

26 Battis, 87.

24

were housewives who had missed previous sermons at the church. Hutchinson’s early followers

were women who were lonely and separated from their friends and family in England; ones who

had turned for advice and comfort on pregnancy and illness to her. They were raised in the Old

World of England and now were on the brink of a new civilization which they neither knew nor

understood and Hutchinson helped them to process their feelings and understand the religion of

the colony.

Since the Puritanical idea was that women remain in the home, most women did not even

have the comfort their men did of leaving the house for fresh air and their expected jobs. The

annual birth of babies kept women housebound. The dissatisfaction Hutchinson felt at sick

bedsides about the spiritual state of other women in the colony was laid to rest as she expounded

upon her beliefs to a growing audience. She was already keenly aware there was frustration and

intellectual stagnation for those women who were well educated. The women of the colony

could not dance, go to a play, no music worth mentioning, no books except dull ones, but they

could talk and talk they did.

Her meetings were at first intended for those women who were unable to get to church.

If a woman was sick or bedridden it deprived her of the sole recreational and cultural facility

available in the town, on Sunday and Thursday. On a Monday women were invited to her house

to come and talk over the sermon of the preceding Sunday.27 The meetings were successful and

after a while ceased to belong exclusively to the women. Hutchinson explained what the

minister preached, added some paraphrases of her own, and then it was short a step to expressing

her own opinion with criticism of the minister’s words.28 The most voluble of all the women

27 Battis, 87.

28 Battis, 85.

25

came home from her meetings and spoke to their men. These women had not found such a relish

in life since the time before they left England.

Mary Dyer who later came to an unhappy end over her Quaker beliefs was among the

first to attend and became one of Hutchinson’s most ardent supporters. Jane Hawkins the

midwife under suspicion within the colony also came, repeating to Hutchinson the finer points of

her lectures to show her understanding. Thus Hutchinson innocently stepped into a breach of

meetinghouse etiquette. At lectures women remained silent but here in the Hutchinson home

they spoke aloud without fear of censure. Hutchinson was eager to clarify Cotton’s sermons and

interpret religious doctrine. Unfortunately her interpretation of his sermons would later border

on heresy.29

Initially Cotton was delighted that she further spread his word for his own beliefs

paralleled hers; though she was far more open about her revelations and prophecy. Husbands

intrigued by their wives’ accounts started attending her meetings as well. Attendance was not

confined to any single social or economic group though William Coddington the richest man in

the colony was a faithful visitor. The confident Hutchinson went further for soon she was

deriding the ministers’ understanding of scripture and she denounced the leaders of the

community. By December of 1636 her meetings with the leaders of the colony showed her

views to be biased toward the only minister in Massachusetts besides John Wheelwright who she

believed preached gospel correctly: Reverend Cotton. Cotton said of her at the time: “She did

much good in our town, in woman’s meeting and at childbirth travails, wherein she was not only

skilful and helpful, but readily fell into good discourse with the women.”30 Cotton attributed

29 Battis, 91.

30 David Hall, 412.

26

much of her success in the colony to her midwifery skills. Though he may have valued her

conversational manners and her knowledge of theology, he was not yet ready to publicly write of

speak of them as yet. Nor was he aware that the midwife was forming her own reading circle

among the housewives.

Puritan men discouraged women from examining the ideology of religion. Claiming the

powers of prophecy and revelations revealed to her through the scriptures Hutchinson led prayer

meetings in her Boston home attracting hundreds of both female and later male followers.

Ministers of the day considered her a threat to social order and the noted Puritan subordination of

women to men. In her meetings she spoke of doctrine which was inconsistent with the principles

that the colony was founded upon. In their daily life the Puritans believed the new doctrine

would encourage others to “indolence or loose-living.”31 She is a key player in early church

controversies of “free grace,” but later as the Antinomian Controversy dies away she still

remains famous.

As Hutchinson became more outspoken a turmoil later settled around her that was called

the Antinomian Controversy or free grace controversy. Hutchinson's ideas were branded as the

heresy of Antinomianism and her followers became known as “Antinomians." Intended to be

derogatory, the term was erroneously applied to those who did not believe that the inner Holy

Spirit released them from obligation to moral law. During this time it was a terrible thing to be

called an Antinomian. They were regarded by the Puritans as enemies of the church. In the

church of Hutchinson’s time it meant rejecting the literal “law” of the Old Testament for the

spiritual “gospel” of the New Testament. This is what the New England Puritans professed to

31 Edmund S. Morgan, “The Case against Anne Hutchinson,” The New England Quarterly 10, no. 4 (December 1937): 637, accessed April 4, 2014, http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/359929.

27

have done in theory yet they in turn had built their religion upon the Old Testament and though

ministers claimed not to, they preached a Covenant of Works.

Works were no evidence of justification nor was profession of religious orthodoxy.

Neither in the end was a profession of a conversion experience. Hutchinson’s beliefs hinged on

the idea that the Spirit of God dwelt in the saved; that human personality virtually ceased to exist

for they were one with God. The Antinomians further believed that holiness consisted in a state

of heart, not in good works. They upheld a Covenant of Grace based on a direct revelation in the

individual soul rather than the Covenant of Works. Essentially their teachings were giving

liberty in an age not prepared for it.32 Their teaching provided for a liberty of the heart and soul

rather than a labor of true and good works toward an uncertain salvation. The controversy came

down to this: those who rested their hope of salvation on a good heart and those who rested it on

good deeds.

The whole colony began discussing Hutchinson and her works. Middle ground was

tough to find. Within the colony friends and enemies became known as Hutchinsonians or anti-

Hutchinsonians.33 So many woman had encouraged their husbands to listen to her that a second

weekly meeting was conducted in which both men and women were invited. Sometimes as

many as eighty men and women crowded into her parlor to hear her interpretation of the previous

week’s sermon.34 The women of the colony who benefited greatly from her midwife skills and

her ability to form close attachments with them flocked to her living-room meetings. However,

some of them found their husbands began looking on Hutchinson as the Devil’s agent and

labeled her meetings as sinister since they took the women away from their work at home. What

32 Carnes, Winship, 35.

33 Battis, 101-103.

34 Ibid.

28

Winthrop must have felt watching from behind his curtains at what went on in his carefully

controlled colony is not known. But soon he began to denounce her meetings and was joined by

the Reverend Thomas Weld.

Many of the more prominent men already believed that the women chattered too much

among themselves, and another women instructing them in the gospel went against God’s word

and would stir dissension. It would not be long before Hutchinson and her disciples would be

exposed. At this period of time none of Hutchinson’s critics attended any of her meetings and

her female followers started maintaining stricter silence in the face of their husbands’

disapproval.

At a lost to explain such loyalty to Anne from the women, many observers fell back on

the Devil theory. Midwives were often considered to be in the company of outside forces.

Midwives and healers were sometimes accused of abortion and infanticide and were likely

suspects for evil and heresy. They were ever-present reminders of the power that resided in

women’s life giving and life maintaining roles. The midwife Hutchinson was under suspicion

not only for her religious leanings but for her important role in the wives’ life.

Ben Barker Benfield in his article “Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude Toward

Woman,” sums the situation as:

. . . [T]hat regenerate men were illumined with divine truth and therefore were priests unto themselves; that women might feel themselves excluded from the relief afforded men by covenant theology; that Anne Hutchinson’ antinomianism was in part, at least, a response to the need thereby created in women; that Winthrop recognized that response; and that his own reaction was largely influenced by what he perceived as a sexual threat; that this sexual threat was intensified by Hutchinson’s role as midwife; that the explanation for the Puritan invidiousness in the treatment of women, and the virulence of Winthrop’s response to Hutchinson lay in the male need to give more definition to men and to God than the initial Protestant dynamic had allowed, and to find an object correlated for such definition in the sexual relationship.35

35Ben Benfield Barker, “Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude to Women,” Feminist Studies 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1972): 66, accessed November 21, 2013,

29

Hutchinson and her skills were up against the superstitions about midwifery and attitudes

about the proper place of midwifery in the running of society. There was always strict controls

on the practice of midwifery stemming long before the arrival of the colonists from England.

Among the abuses to be outlawed: a midwife must never cause or allow a woman to name the

wrong father of her child, claim another woman’s child as her own, murder an infant, use

witchcraft, charms or sorcery, administer any herbs or potions that would cause abortion or allow

a woman to deliver her baby in secret. Now these strictures were set against Hutchinson in

alliance with her teachings. Men in the colony believed that by the subterfuge of midwifery

Hutchinson might succeed in gathering a large enough female following to align against the men

in domestic and church matters. An eminent female takeover by the very women who had to

uphold such strict standards in delivering babies could be considered tantamount to black magic

and the passing of dark secrets.

As Hutchinson began to speak more plainly it was apparent that she knew who would be

saved, including herself. Unfortunately many of those who were not really saved were pillars of

the community. This included almost all the ministers, except of course John Cotton. Male

elders saw this as a female usurpation of rightful authority. Hutchinson was putting her opinions

in Cotton’s mouth and at the time was doing so privately within her home. How long would

Winthrop wait for a public test of strength against this midwife? It was not easy as her audience

grew and colonists began to travel into Boston to her teachings.

On October 25, 1636 there was a meeting in Reverend Cotton’s house with Pastor

Wilson, Elder Thomas Leverett, Deacon Coggeshall and Reverend Wheelwright. Their concerns

lay with Hutchinson and the rumors circulating that she accused them of preaching “not

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177641.

30

according to the gospel.”36 Cotton called her to come to his house and give her opinions. She

believed the ministers taught that people could have an assurance of salvation from their holiness

and not from a scripture revelation of God’s love. She believed further that their preaching did

not have the seal of the Spirit which happened only to the apostles.37 Being compared to Christ’s

disciples did not unduly concern all the ministers and laymen present. Some understood her to

say that while the colony’s ministers were decent preachers they were not as spiritually

developed as Reverend Cotton because they had not yet experienced the Holy Spirit in its full

force. Some of the men shrugged her revelations off as observations by an untrained woman.

However, she believed that it was only after Christ’s death that the apostles were converted to

the covenant of grace she spoke freely about. Therefore the ministers of Massachusetts with

their sermons were harassing those who like Hutchinson truly understood the meaning of free

grace. The Puritans of the colony believed in the Bible scriptures which held women in their

place and this was exactly the reason Hutchinson insisted on her ability to communicate directly

with God and reveal her own interpretation of the Scriptures. As an intelligent woman she could

not accept the minister’s insistence that only the manifestation of outer piety in good deeds could

assure human salvation. Cotton later told her it was regrettable that she made comparisons

between ministers.38

When Hutchinson with the aid of Governor Vane and Reverend Cotton attempted to

have her brother-in-law Reverend Wheelwright installed as a third minister of the Boston church,

most of the congregation supported her. But the pastor of the church Reverend John Wilson



38 Ibid.

31

gave a speech on the "inevitable dangers of separation" caused by the religious dissensions and

joined with Winthrop in opposing her.39 Many of her supporters deserted her when then

Governor Vane who favored her cause lost his office to her staunch opponent, John Winthrop.

In addition, it was not proven that Boston needed a third minister and Winthrop in the end did

carry the vote, but barely.

More importantly, the Hutchinson faction had finally made a move that Winthrop could

challenge. He now could question before the whole congregation gathered in the church the

suspect opinions that Hutchinson had been fostering. What started as a religious point of

difference grew into a schism that threatened the political stability of the colony. To her

opponents questioning the church meant questioning the State.40 Winthrop began to take note of

the activities of Hutchinson and Wheelwright by October of 1636.41 Cotton himself remained

infuriatingly aloof throughout the controversy. He appeared to initially enjoy the adulation of

Hutchinson yet refused to embrace her against the pragmatism of Winthrop.

During a fasting day at church, Reverend Wheelwright’s sermon angered Winthrop and

the former governor called a council. Weeks earlier there had been problems at the city ports

over levies on imports, so the town was already simmering. Reverend Wheelwright was charged

with sedition and contempt, and remanded to trial. His trial would greatly affect Hutchinson’s

reputation and life in Boston. While Wheelwright awaited a court verdict, Hutchinson and her

followers refused to sign petitions against him.42

39 Henretta, James A., W. Elliot Brownlee, David Brody, and Susan Ware. America's History: Vol. One. (New York: Worth Publishers, 1993), 145-146.

40 Morgan, 638.

41 Winthrop, 239-243.

42 Morgan, 643.

32

The session of the General Court which began on November 2, 1637 at the meetinghouse

had the purpose to "rid the colony of the sectaries who would not be dragooned into the

abandonment of their convictions."43 One of the first orders of business was to deal with

Wheelwright, whose case had been long deferred by Winthrop in hopes that he might finally see

the error of his ways. When asked if he was ready to confess his offenses Wheelwright

responded that "he was not guilty, that he had preached nothing but the truth of Christ, and he

was not responsible for the application they [the other ministers] made of it". Winthrop painted a

picture of a peaceful colony before Wheelwright's arrival, and how after his fast-day sermon

Boston men refused to join the Pequot War effort, Pastor Wilson was often slighted, and

controversy arose in town meetings.44 The court urged him to leave the colony voluntarily but

this he would not do, seeing such a move as being an admission of guilt. After further argument

in the case the court declared him guilty and read the sentence.45 Wheelwright was initially

given until March to leave the colony, but when ordered not to preach during the interim, he

refused and was then given two weeks to depart the jurisdiction. When directed not to preach

during his two weeks of preparation, he again refused, and this time the court determined that

such an injunction was not worth pursuing.46

As the Wheelwright controversy swirled around, Hutchinson realized she herself was in

danger by the Spring and Summer of 1637. Aside from her divided teachings, she was

dangerously close to committing an act of heresy according to church tenets. The men who

controlled the affairs of the colony determined that not only the churches but the government of

43 Battis, 180-183.

44 Ibid.


46 Battis, 184-185.

33

the commonwealth should be conducted strictly upon the teachings of the Bible. The

Massachusetts Bay Colony courts were not predicated on any set of judicial laws and she could

be tired in civil court.

The Governor, Deputy Governor and Assistants held courts for the ‘ordering of affairs’

and exercised the entire judicial powers of the colony. During this period few laws or orders

were passed. When complaints were made the court upon hearing them determined whether the

conduct of the accused was such in their opinion to deserve punishment. If that were so, a

punishment was decided upon. Here lay the problem with indicting Hutchinson for trials were

conducted without any regard to the English precedents. There was no defined criminal code

and what constituted a crime and its punishment was entirely within the discretion of the court.

How to try a midwife for her heresy in Scripture readings? If in doubt as to what should be

considered an offence the Bible was looked to for guidance. The General Court itself from time

to time questioned the ministers or elders which they answered in writing; much like the

Attorney General or Supreme Court today may advise.47

By Autumn 1637 the dissension of her teachings in the colony erupted into a firestorm.

No neutrality was possible. The colony’s residents were forced to stand with Governor

Winthrop and his clergy or with the Hutchinsonians. The clash between Hutchinson and the

Massachusetts authorities is a great spark in history. This controversy provided that

excommunication from the church and prosecution by the court seemed the only viable sources

for a midwife who was out of line. Yet no magistrate was prepared at this time to have a

singular woman pose the most dangerous challenge that the Massachusetts establishment was

forced to cope with during their colony’s first half-century.

47 James F. Cooper, Jr., “Anne Hutchinson and the “Lay Rebellion” against the Clergy,” The New England Quarterly 61, no. 3 (September 1988): 385, accessed April 1, 2014, http: //www.jstor.org/stable/366286.

34

Hutchinson is often viewed as a martyr for her convictions but she was not burned at the

stake or suffered prolonged imprisonment, she was asked to leave the area; others had left the

colony before her over religious dissent. The men prosecuting her were afraid of her beliefs and

they were intolerant of her because of her status as midwife within their community. Her skills

were necessary, but now the question posed before the colony’s elders was were her beliefs

necessary as well. It would all depend on the trial of the general court and the later decision of

the church elders.

Chapter TwoThe Midwife Stands Trial

35

Edwin Austin Abbey, Illustration of Anne Hutchinson, [c1896], Reproduced from Popular History of the United States by William Cullen Bryant, Sidney Howard Gay, and Noah Brooks. New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1898. Accessed April 1, 2014, http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/anne-hutchinson.html

On August 30, 1637 an assembly of the churches in Boston held by the ministers and

magistrates and known as the Synod met to examine Hutchinson and her supporter’s beliefs.

Afterward they handed Winthrop a list of sixteen errors of “blasphemous, erroneous, and unsafe

opinions” to use against her and her followers.48 Reverend Wheelwright refused to recant his

inflammatory sermon calling for spiritual battle against the Puritans. He became their first

target. This session focused on a petition supporting Wheelwright. The governor, deputy

governor, magistrates, and court officials would together act as judge, jury, and defense

48David Hall, 43.

36

advocates.49 Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, a minister whose ideas made him enemies in the

colony was convinced that the other ministers were incapable of interpreting the gospel correctly

and was banished from Massachusetts—the same punishment threatening Hutchinson for she

had backed his ministry. Indeed had she been a man she would have signed the petition written

up in support of Wheelwright before his forced exile.50 The court dealt with Wheelwright and

then turned to other matters.

Winthrop’s administration focused on eliminating what they considered the heart of the

colony’s problem: a midwife who considered herself prophetic and well educated in theology to

teach the Bible. Winthrop worried that Hutchinson was more popular than all the ministers in

the colony combined.51 Governor Winthrop faced the difficult dilemma of not being able to

tolerate Hutchinson personally and as father of the colony he was unwilling to let her accomplish

any further divisions among the colonists. But he was uncertain of how to convict her. As a

woman she was not entitled to a public role in Puritan society. Accusing her of the crime of

negative impact on the colony was complicated if not impossible since it was known she counted

on others to mount her defense. Since much of the Puritan culture was based on the notion that

women were subservient and inferior; the image of a female who could turn so many minds

against the colony’s teachings was a tough one for Winthrop to sell before the courts.

Consideration must be paid to the fact that alliance of oneself with a certain minister was a

matter of conscience, and free of the state’s punitive consideration. Winthrop decided to follow

the tactic that she was guilty of slandering the colony’s ministers.



51 Ibid.

37

Winthrop’s relationship with Hutchinson was rocky and antagonistic. He had been

governor before, and after his last term she and her husband were firmly entrenched in the

community with the help of his predecessor, Governor Henry Vane. Under Vane’s regime,

unorthodox beliefs were allowed to take hold. Now back in power Winthrop intended to purge

his colony of any opposition. Since the King in England was looking for signs of unrest as an

excuse to rescind the colony’s charter and exert direct control, and the Pequot Indians were

waging war; the fate of the colony hung in the balance.

Puritan contemporary belief insisted that God selected those destined to receive His grace

and enter heaven and these select were the holy ones. These few would discover in their

lifetimes whether they were chosen; a state that Puritans called “assurance.” They would come

to know inwardly that they had been sealed with God’s grace and achieved justification for their

ascent into holiness. This begs the question that if classification as a chosen one was dependent

on God’s will, what difference did a person’s conduct during their life make? This was the line

that divided Hutchinson and her followers from their critics. According to Hutchinson she

believed her grasp of scripture came from the Lord Himself and that good works were crucial for

someone to receive God’s grace. However, one’s conduct was immaterial to their chance of

being chosen.

Most Puritans believed that grace was paramount and that good works were a part of

God’s plan. Good works were also evident of justification. Hutchinson was in trouble with the

ministers because she implied that they were incapable of preaching a covenant of grace because

they did have the seal of the spirit and were not even saints. All the events that would propel a

trial forward had already been in motion for some time. An examination of the trial proves that

Hutchinson was unfairly targeted not only for her teachings but the position in which she taught

38

as a midwife in the community. The trial was a huge event for the public who squeezed

themselves into every bit of empty space in the meetinghouse. Hutchinson was forced to remain

standing while her inquisitors seated themselves in long rows of wooden benches.

Prior to her civil trial Winthrop seems to have thought dealing with the Hutchinson

matter to be relatively easy. She was a woman after all and in any argument with a man in

Puritan culture she would always get the worse end. In a series of private meetings with the

ministers Hutchinson was to be questioned, commanded, threatened and urged to bring herself

back within the bounds of her womanhood. Winthrop intended she would be led to repent her

rash and unfortunate misdeeds with submission before the masculine authority. She would

repent or she would be gone. Yet here Winthrop miscalculated; the ministers got nowhere with

her and she did not betray any female frailty in her arguments.

The following trial transcript is from the General Court transcripts of November 2, 1637.

It appears in Charles Francis Adams’ Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636-

1638 (1894) and is also contained in the document collection of David Hall’s The Antinomian

Controversy, 1636-1638. The version used in this thesis is the version edited by Mark C. Carnes

and Michael P. Winship in their book The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law and

Intolerance in Puritan New England for purposes of clarity. A careful reading of the trial record

proves that Hutchinson used as her main defense the fact the ministers did not testify against her

under oath. She believed that this failure to accuse her in a public trial while under oath

understated the amount of pressure which these same people had put on her to talk.

While the trial lasted two days, the transcript appears remarkably brief for such an

important event. Notes in journals and publications by Governor Winthrop would later provide

further insight. For the purpose of understanding fully what a woman confronted by an entire

39

colony of suspicious magistrates and clergy the trial is included in as much entirety as noted in

Carnes and Winship’s book.

Governor Winthrop opened the hearing and let loose against Hutchinson all his pent up

grievances and accusations:

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.

Winthrop was aware that as a woman Hutchinson was not allowed to sign the

Wheelwright petition but he asked her if she did justify Reverend Wheelwright’s sermon and the

petition. Hutchinson was already incensed by the governor’s denunciation of her behavior as

“nor fitting for your sex” and his threat that “we may reduce you so that you may become a

profitable member here among us.” If she now agreed to a Covenant of Works, she was certain

that she would be reduced to the mercy of the men and the church which would interfere with her

private dialogue between her conscience and God.

The next few minutes the spectators in the court were treated to an angry exchange

between the highest officer of their colony and the midwife he hauled into court as she demanded

the charges against her be read:

Gov. John Winthrop: I have told you some already and can tell you more.

40

Mrs. Hutchinson: Name one, Sir.

Gov. John Winthrop: Have I not named some already?

Mrs. Hutchinson: What have I said or done?

Gov. John Winthrop: The things that you have done include that you harbored a countenanced

those who are parties in the aforementioned faction.

Mrs. Hutchison: That’s a matter of conscience, Sir.

The governor decided to drop this argument and bring forth another accusation. Hutchinson had

broken a pivotal law which he charged was the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and

mother.” This he deftly translated into a command to obey the rulers and fathers of the colony.

Hutchinson continued to diffuse the governor’s arguments until he snapped at her: “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.”

The governor then decided to focus on the meetings at her home, insisting that she had no

right to preach even in the confines of her own home. Since the governor had bent the Fifth

Commandment for their own purposes Hutchinson tried her hand at using a paraphrase from the

Bible. She stated that:

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. . . . 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.

The governor responded that: “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

41

come to be taught of you?. . . . 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.

Hutchinson. To which Hutchinson replied: “Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women

and why do you call me to teach the court?” The governor replied: “We do not call you to teach

the court but to lay open yourself.”

The governor was worried that certain of the female participation proposed by Hutchinson would

destroy the social order of the colony.

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.

The governor had launched into a lengthy speech in which he attacked Hutchinson for

breeding religious disharmony among the women. He accused her of tempting women to go far

beyond their God-given calling of wife, mother, and family. The others Hutchinson counted on

for support such as William Coddington and William Colburn spoke not a single word, neither

did the Reverend Cotton.

The Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley jumped in:

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

42

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.

The arguments went back and forth between the Covenant of Works versus the Covenant

of Grace. So far Hutchinson had defend her position ably, leaving the governor to announce:

“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 following morning Governor Winthrop resumed court proceedings with the

following:

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

Hutchinson after careful study of her notes the night before did not believe the ministers

had spoken truthfully as the argument over Covenant of Works versus Grace had preceded. She

asked that the ministers take an oath before testimony. Winthrop replied that only the court

43

could make a decision about requiring oaths before testimony and this was not a case before a

jury. The governor bypassed the oath taking issue. He pursued his original goal to reducing

Hutchinson to a profitable member of the colony. So far, she had been an unyielding adversary

but the governor allowed her to call witnesses.

John Coggeshall testified: “Yes, I dare say that she did not say all that which they lay

against her. Thomas Leverett, former teacher to Hutchinson and active supporter of Cotton

testified:

To my best remembrance when the elders did send for her, Mr. Peters did with much vehemency and entreaty 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.

Reverend Cotton was called and had very little to offer Hutchinson for he used the disclaimer:

“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.” He regretted that a rumor had been started in the colony and “that she had spoken

some condemning words of their ministry . . . but sorry I was that any comparison should be

between me and my brethren and uncomfortable it was.”

Hutchinson’s response was her speech how the Lord revealed himself to her and from

this she believed she must come to New England. When asked how she knew it was the spirit,

she replied: “So to me by an immediate revelation.” As Winthrop reminded the court that his

power in his office was authorized directly by God, Hutchinson warned the court: “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

44

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.”

At this juncture everyone in the courtroom was cold, hungry and restless. Hutchinson

had been forced to stand the day before until she fell ill and a chair was found for her. The

hearing continued with a chastened and quiet Cotton while Coddington demanding civil liberties

for Hutchinson. Winthrop was quiet for a time but in his private memoirs recorded: “See the

impudent boldness of a proud dame, that Attila-like makes havoc of all that stand in the way of

her ambitious spirit; she had boasted before that her opinions must prevail, neither could she

endure a stop in her way. The court did clearly discern where the fountain was of all our

distempers.” Now he summed up the proceedings and asked for a vote.

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. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: I desire to know wherefore I am banished?

Gov. John Winthrop: Say no more. The court knows wherefore and is satisfied.52

Winthrop had opened the trial by stating that Hutchinson was known to cause trouble in

the colony, disrupting the peace of not only the church but his commonwealth. He labeled her a

heretic before she even opened her mouth when he accused her of being prejudiced to the honor

52 Carnes, Winship, 65-85.

45

of the church and ministers. He further stated he wanted to “reduce her” so she could be a more

profitable member of the community as if her work as a midwife and healer were of no value

within the colony. He outwardly threatened her that if she remained “obstinate in her course” he

would insure she troubled him (us) no further. However, Hutchinson distinguished between the

ministers who advanced a Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace positions as provided

by Reverend Cotton and her brother-in-law Reverend Wheelwright which was vital to her

defense. She attempted to align herself with learned men, although one had been banished to

prove she was not merely a troublemaker, but one who followed a finite set of doctrine which

others preached, even though she herself reinterpreted it through her revelations from the

Scriptures.

A curious point is how Hutchinson asked about the charges brought against her but was

told to keep her conscience to herself or it would be kept for her. Her teachings to the colony

and her good works as a midwife were dwarfed by the errors Winthrop had previously summed

up against Reverend Wheelwright and the other Hutchinsonians. But the governor did reply that

she transgressed the law of God and state, so perhaps this was his summary; at least before the

court of men. The governor further stated she broke the Fifth Commandment of the Bible in not

honoring her mother and father. She did not break any commandments in the Bible when she

nursed the families of the colony, only when she showed evidence of her support of Wheelwright

in his sermons. It must be noted that she was unable to sign the petition previously brought

before Winthrop against Wheelwright because she was a woman. But she had in theory

supported it, which was heresy in Winthrop’s eyes.

The governor finally arrived at the question he wanted to ask all along: Why do you keep

meeting in your house with other men and women? Hutchinson pointed out it was not unlawful

46

to hold a meeting, but Winthrop pressed her on the fact. Hutchinson dodged this skillfully by

quoting the Bible, Titus 2:3-5 that elder women should instruct the younger. This was an

excellent defense for her holding Bible reading groups in her home. Even Winthrop further

probed for answers when he queried that there is a rule for receiving women in her home and did

she know what it was. No doubt, a gathering in childbirth would be less innocent than a meeting

to discuss the scriptures. If Hutchinson had not strayed from the confines of her previous chosen

field of midwifery she would not stand accused of calling other women away from their tasks of

attending men. This is what Winthrop was referring to at the beginning of this particular line of

questioning.

Winthrop stated that she was seducing honest people because her opinions were different

from the word of God and the “simple souls” of Boston wandered away from the ministers and

magistrates as a result of Hutchinson’s words. He continued to pounce on the fact that

Hutchinson caused the colony women and later the men to neglect their families. Though

Hutchinson defended herself by stating that one meeting held only women and another men and

women, it was evident she spoke at both which she made no attempt to conceal.

Winthrop continues a tirade of the trouble with Hutchinson since her arrival. From her

shipboard questioning of the minister who came over with her to her agreement on free grace

with Cotton and Vane he spoke of her overwhelming influence on those she spoke with at her

home. Finally Winthrop comes to the Covenant of Grace; the heretical point Winthrop was

heading toward from the beginning of her civil trial.

Winthrop labored on the point that Hutchinson called the ministers out for preaching only

a Covenant of Works and no other way to salvation. Hutchinson stated for the court that what

she said in privacy to another was vastly different from what she might say in front of the

47

magistrates. Others of the court agreed that Hutchinson was difficult from the beginning of her

arrival and she was slowly turning the colony against the ministers by accusing them of only

teaching a Covenant of Works instead of a Covenant of Grace. Six ministers claimed that

Hutchinson accused them of preaching a Covenant of Works and therefore were not considered

able ministers to interpret the gospel.

That Hutchinson was aware of the type of defense she could mount if she could only get

the men to admit they were bringing her forth on unwritten charges. She continued in the trial as

noted to inquire as to any written notes of the ministers who accused her but no one seemed to

remark upon who had them. Reverend Wilson stated perhaps Mr. Vane took it with him back to

England. Rightfully, Hutchinson wanted her accusers’ statements written under oath and

introduced under oath. The feeling in the court was that the ministers as men of God did not

need to take an oath as to the veracity of their statements. On this point Hutchinson stood firm,

refusing to deny or say that she inferred the ministers were not preaching according to the gospel

since she did not have written statements submitted to her. If she had to stand before the court

and take oaths then the men must do so as well. Hutchinson believed her words were distorted

by the ministers when she interpreted the Scriptures in a private manner in her home. Mr.

Leveret and Mr. Coggeshall were called as her witnesses and spoke on her behalf. The Reverend

Cotton was called and did not defend her so well.

Cotton claimed not to recall what was said or done in private conversations for

Hutchinson. Strange behavior for the man who convinced her to bury Mary Dyer’s stillborn

child when she had come to him after the birth for advice and succor. Hutchinson had told

Cotton that the other ministers did not preach a Covenant of Grace as clearly as he did because as

the apostles in the Bible were for a time without the spirit so were the ministers; therefore they

48

could not teach the Covenant of Grace fully and completely. Cotton continued to backpedal

saying he could not recall if Hutchinson said others were not able ministers of the New

Testament. This forced Hutchinson to fall back on her own revelations which she ably spread

the Covenant of Grace but it was not enough to stay the magistrates’ hands from convicting her.

Hutchinson’s defense regarding the minister’s exaggeration of what she said about them

also minimized the degree to which she spoke in accordance with Reverend Cotton’s beliefs.

The colony had stated it did not prosecute people for their beliefs as long as they kept those

beliefs to themselves. But when ministers pressed her for her opinions, she shared them.

Hutchinson had harsh opinions about the ministers but expressed them privately, never expecting

them to come forth in a court of law.

Hutchinson’s revelations took the form of Scripture and its verses and had they not been

used to form an attack on the ministers she may well have received a mild rebuke from the court.

Winthrop in the trial transcript regarded her revelations as unacceptable. Tried in a court of

Puritans by fellow Puritans Winthrop did not need a legal defense or prosecution for defiance of

English laws when they believed those laws broke the word of God was lawful. For

Hutchinson’s preaching to be illegal it would need to be against the Bible teachings. The synod

which previously met concluded that the ministers did not preach a Covenant of Works but had

no way of enforcing this verdict. If only she could have convinced a majority of the court that

the ministers preached a Covenant of Works she may have escaped the punishment of

banishment from the colony.

Hutchinson’s reasoning and excellent grasp of the scriptures were evident at her trial.

Most notably when she asked which law she had broken and when she was asked to justify her

teachings. At the trial many ministers could not recall if she said they were not sealed with the

49

spirit of grace, therefore could not preach a Covenant of Grace. At first Winthrop appeared out

of options for her prosecution other than an admonition for her. But then Hutchinson began to

speak for herself. She was initially urged to be silent but Hutchinson spoke of God revealing

himself to her in the scriptures and of his favor for her. She finished with her prophesy: Should

they move against her as they no doubt planned, God would destroy them, their posterity, and all

of Massachusetts itself.53 Here Winthrop found his loophole, for no one communicated directly

with God and any claim to do so was blasphemy. As far as Winthrop was concerned, her

revelations were delusional and the cause of all discord that her teachings had brought to the

community. She was a heretic, thus he would sentence her as one.

The puritan colony of Massachusetts believed the Bible held the truth and that all

Christians should follow that truth. Their community was built around the unity of belief and

worship. Hutchinson was tried not in just any court; this was a court of puritans. Massachusetts

had patriarchal authority in which men ruled. Women like Hutchinson had few legal rights. The

Bible commanded them to submit to their husbands. The biggest dispute in her trial lay in

whether she stepped outside the bounds of her womanhood. Hutchinson persisted in her

conviction she did nothing inappropriate in that regard.

Hutchinson was soon to face another crisis for the church trial for heresy was yet to

begin. Having faced the magistrates and ministers of the colony to defend her beliefs she now

had to prepare herself and her family to face the church elders. She could expect no sympathy or

empathy there. Many ministers such as Cotton were recanting the original versions of their

dealings with Hutchinson on matters of doctrine; claiming they misunderstood or she

misinterpreted the teachings and the meaning was not caught until Hutchinson later starting

53 Winthrop, 243.

50

speaking to others in study groups at her home. Her fear is palpable in the books written about

her. She would have good reason to fear the community as heresy charges leveled against her

spread her notorious reputation throughout New England communities.

Chapter ThreeThe Church Speaks for Itself

After the civil trial in Cambridge which was conducted by the state the magistrates met to

decide what to do with Hutchinson. Winthrop would not give Hutchinson another chance, she

had quietly undermined colony religious politics for over a year. The General Court went on to

remove all Hutchinsonians from power by November 15, 1637.54 The top three, Hutchinson,

Wheelwright and William Aspinall, notary, court reporter, and surveyor in the colony were

already banished. Eight others such as Coggeshall, William Baulston, the innkeeper; Edward

Hutchinson, Anne’s son; Richard Gridley, the blacksmith; Thomas Marshall, a ferryman; 54 Battis, 257-261.

51

William Dyer, a milliner; William Dinely, and Captain John Underhill, the Pequot War hero

were removed for signing the petition and lost their public offices. Five days later everyone who

signed the petition was disarmed including Captain Underhill which was a severe punishment

because of increased fear of the Amerindians.55

In an odd move later dedicated for a woman declared not fit for society the Massachusetts

court decided to build the first college to minimize further Hutchinson threats. The college

named for John Harvard would be able to indoctrinate young men in the ministry before they fell

under the Antinomian teachings. Anne Hutchinson would later be called the true midwife of

Harvard. “As a result of her heresy” the Reverend Peter Gomes at Harvard wrote in Harvard

Magazine 2002,

The colony determined to provide for the education of a new generation of ministers and theologians who would secure New England’s civil and theological peace against future seditious Mrs. Hutchinsons…the inscription on Harvard’s Johnson Gate. At Harvard we may seek her memorial in vain, but without her it is difficult to do justice to the motivating impulse of our foundation. Inadvertent midwife to a college founded in part to protect posterity from her errors, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, ironically, would be more at home at Harvard today than any of her critics.56

Since the General Court trial was conducted by the state, Hutchinson had to endure a

religious trial. She was told to remain in Massachusetts for the winter under house arrest in

Roxbury. The court claimed this was not only for her protection—they would not cast a woman

out into the winter wilderness, but the conviction for heresy bound her to remain for a decision

by the church. This was to be held in March 1638 in Boston and its outcome was assured for she

was already a convicted heretic who had been banished by the colony.57

55Peter G. Gomes, “Anne Hutchinson Brief Life of Harvard’s Midwife: 1595-1643,” Harvard Magazine, (November-December 2002), 1-2, accessed April 2, 2014, http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/anne-hutchinson.html.

56 David Hall, 123.

57 David Hall, 350.

52

Winthrop confided to his journal that he still felt a sense of disbelief that a women led

faction: “. . . the root of all was found to be in Mistress Hutchinson” should have attempted to

censure him. Even under house arrest Hutchinson unsettled Winthrop and he worried about her

continued effect on the colony. He also had good reason to worry about the effect of the trial on

the Reverend Cotton.58

It was decided Hutchinson would be held at Joseph Weld’s house, the brother of

Reverend Thomas Weld in the town of Roxbury. Her husband was required to pay for her

upkeep and she was forbidden from working as a midwife, walking through the town, and

entertaining visitors except immediate family. The court intended to isolate her and reduce her

support. Winthrop wanted no Puritan to take inspiration from her. The ministers visited in an

attempt to reform her and also to take note of anything she might say which could be used at the

church trial in the spring. She worried greatly about her sixteenth pregnancy which was not

progressing as the other pregnancies had done, though the midwife in her could not say why this

was so. While she was under house arrest and unbeknownst to her the ministers proceeded to

collect secret opinions spoken by Hutchinson to be used as “errors and opinions” against her in

the church trial. At one point they had twenty-nine “opinions.”59

Her husband gathered with other Hutchinsonian men now out of power to discuss where

a new settlement might receive them and allow greater freedom of worship. Reverend Roger

Williams who settled Providence Plantation in Rhode Island suggested Aquidneck Island. While

still in Boston Hutchinson’s husband signed an agreement with others to become joint

proprietors of Rhode Island and William Coddington was chosen as their sole magistrate. As her

58 Winthrop, 256-257.59 Winthrop, 245-247.

53

husband chose the land that would become their second home in the new world, she remained

behind in her Roxbury jail about forty-five miles southwest of Boston.60

This was also a painful time for Cotton who had suffered from “convenient amnesia”

during Hutchinson’s trial. History did not judge him kindly. Historian Charles Francis Adams

Jr. writes of Cotton: “He made haste to walk in a Covenant of Works – and the walk was a very

dirty one.”61 Up until the time of Hutchinson’s trial he believed her opinions to be aligned with

his. His tolerance was greater than other ministers for her yet he would not stand up for her at

the trial. He made a decision of sorts to leave Massachusetts for New Haven, Connecticut much

to the consternation of Governor Winthrop who feared a mass emigration in Cotton’s wake.

Worse, the departure of the minister would be seen by supporters in England as a sure sign the

colony was failing and England might cut off all future funds. Cotton was persuaded to remain

in Boston by Winthrop and his colleagues. Cotton retained his original principles which

Hutchinson had eagerly embraced but his doctrine and personality were much more temperate

than the Hutchinsonians and so he continued to thrive.62

The General Court hearing for banishment and the church trial for excommunication had

both distinct similarities and differences. The defendant was the same and the purpose of both

hearings was to silence her in such a way that any future transgressors in her same vein would be

frightened into submission. The church trial differed in that the meetinghouse was under

religious control and most if not all of the inquisitors would be ecclesiastics except for Governor

Winthrop, Deputy Governor Dudley, and Treasurer Richard Bellingham.

60 Winship, Times and Trials, 123. 61

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Three Episodes in Massachusetts History (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892), 515.

62 Battis, 227-228.

54

Prior to the public trial an important event had happened which would impact decisions

made about Hutchinson at the church trial. Mary Dyer, a supporter of Hutchinson gave birth two

months early on October 17, 1638 with Jane Hawkins and Anne Hutchinson attending as

midwives.63 This was approximately three weeks before Hutchinson’s civil trial. When

Winthrop got wind of the event several months later he obliquely and then publicly discussed

Hawkins’ and Dyer’s possible involvement of witchcraft in connection with the stillborn child:

Dyer’s “monstrous birth.”64 Although childbirth fatalities and deformed births were interpreted in

a variety of ways in the seventeenth century Winthrop saw this one as evidence of what he

already believed that Hutchinson, Hawkins, and Dyer were instruments of Satan.65

Later when describing the corpse of Mary’s baby as a monster with horns, claws, and

scales, Winthrop went on to suggest its demonic origins:

When it died in the mother’s body, (which was about two hours before the birth,) the bed whereon the mother lay did shake, and withal there was such a noisome savor, as most of the women were taken with extreme vomiting and purging, so as they were forced to depart; and others of them their children were taken with convulsion and so were sent for home, so as by these occasions it came to be concealed.66

The reference to the shaking bed implied that the fetus itself was a devil. The belief that

Satan could impregnate a witch was widely held, and demon offspring were alleged to struggle

violently during their birth. The awful smell also evoked images of devils thought to give off a

noxious odor too powerful for human tolerance.67 Without directly saying so, Winthrop

insinuated that Hutchinson, Dyer and Hawkins in participating in this episode all revealed

63 Ibid.

64 Winthrop, 266-269.

65 Winthrop, 267-268.

66 Ibid.

67 Sally Smith Booth, The Witches of Early America (New York, 1975), 101.

55

themselves to be witches.68 This would be brought up in great length after Hutchinson’s church

trial and the ramifications would appear to consume Winthrop whenever he spoke further of

Hutchinson and her trial.

Much would be made of Hutchinson’s knock on Reverend Cotton’s door the night she

delivered Dyer’s baby. Cotton was sympathetic and alarmed. He recognized God’s voice in this

happenstance and knew the synod currently in session would interpret this as a sign of God’s rate

upon Hutchinson. Cotton advised she report the baby as stillborn and remain silent about the

details. Hutchinson departed his house and considered his advice proof of his great regard for

her and her friends.69 As seen in the civil trial transcripts this support would later be withdrawn

and forgotten.

On March 15, 1638 Hutchinson was summoned from the house in Roxbury to stand trial

before the church of Boston.70 Such was her notoriety that the meetinghouse was packed with

people from all over the colony. Among clergy present were Reverend John Wilson, lay elder

Thomas Oliver, Reverend Thomas Shepard, Reverend Peter Bulkley and Reverend Cotton.

Hutchinson’s husband and chief male allies were among the men negotiating for their new home

in Rhode Island and were therefore absent.

At first there was theological arguments over Hutchinson’s twenty-nine alleged errors.

However, the hearing gradually turned into a denunciation of Hutchinson’s character; the

midwife who did not know her proper place in society and was refusing to learn that place from

the men who were her superiors. The most virulent accusation was the one against her gathering

68 Karlsen, 17.

69 Timothy D. Hall, 109.

70 Battis, 235.

56

together a community of women to reject the idea of resurrection. The accounting of the church

trial is from Winthrop which is contained in, John Winthrop, A Short Story of the Rise, Reign

and Ruine of the Antinomians, Familists and Libertines, a chapter in David Hall’s The

Antinomian Controversy 1636-1638.71

Thomas Leverett, Cotton’s longtime protector who Hutchinson knew from England was

managing the excommunication and he began with the numerous errors and charges against her

by the ministers of Newtown and Roxbury who visited her while imprisoned. He leveled the

opinions that concerned her ideas about body, soul and Christ in addition to the opinion of her

Antinomianism. Hutchinson was shocked at the depth of betrayal of private conversation with

the ministers. “By what rule of the Word,” she inquired “[should] these Elders…come to me in

private to desire Satisfaction in some poynts, and doe professe in the sight of God that they did

not come to Intrap or insnare me, and now…would come to bringe it publicly into the church

before they had privately dealt with me”72 For nine hours she matched wits in both scripture and

ecclesiastical arguments. She conceded some points to her inquisitors about the definition of

“soul” but overall resisted the pressure to cave completely to their line of questioning. As a

former student of Mr. Leverett she spoke in a familiar role.

During the hearing Hutchinson had harsh words for Reverend Shepard for he had come to

her in private and “claimed he did not intend to ensnare” her.73 She had hoped he was in

sympathy with her. In her mind bringing this matter to the church without informing her was a

violation of scriptural rule. Hutchinson argued that the points she raised in discussion with

Shepard were only her questions about scripture verses and their meanings. Shepard responded

71 David Hall, 199-310. 72 Battis, 236.


57

that the “vilest Errors” were brought into churches by such questions and Cotton agreed with him

further requesting that Hutchinson respond to each of the opinions on the list.

The most suspicious opinion that Hutchinson supposedly held was a denial of the

resurrection of the physical body, and an emphasis on a spiritual union with Christ through

conversion known as resurrection. Hutchinson held the opinion that the resurrection was over

after conversion as she previously upheld in her teachings in accordance with the Bible in

Matthew 22:30: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”74

When Reverend Bulkeley addressed her he did so from the position of attack on her

womanhood. “I desire to know of Mistress Hutchinson whether you hold that foul, gross, filthy,

and abominable opinion, held by Familists, of the community of women,” meaning a community

in which women have power over men. The Reverend Davenport ignored her repeated denials

and asked “If the resurrection be past, then marriage is past, and then if there be any union

between man and woman it is not by marriage but in a way of community,” or what is now

called free love. Hutchinson was repelled by this suggestion that she questioned the vow of

marriage.75 As a midwife she may well have delivered a fair share of babies born out of wedlock

but for herself and any respectable woman of the time, the idea was abhorrent. While the

ministers might not hold Hutchinson’s words in private, she would not hold private any details

given her at childbirth which might indicate an unmarried woman recently brought to bed of a

child. In the case of a midwife this was against colonial law. The church was concerned with

the midwife practice of instant baptism when necessary if the baby would seem likely to die. At

74 Ibid.

75 David Hall, 362.

58

her trial this innocent practice was blown all out of proportion to appear distinctly sinister. If

Hutchinson were practicing the privilege of baptism it conferred on her an office in the church.

During the church trial her former ally Reverend Cotton hammered at her with words

putting forth the opinion that Hutchinson’s doctrine was such it guaranteed a community of men

and women joined in sexual relationships outside of marriage. He cautioned the women of the

congregation, “many of whom I fear have beene too much seduced and led aside by her.”76 To

the opinions of a familist promiscuity coming from her remarks upon the resurrection, Cotton

wielded a double edged sword. He stated he had neither heard nor suspected that Hutchinson

had been unfaithful to her husband, “Yet that will follow upon it,” he warned.77

Warming to the topic, Cotton expounded on Hutchinson’s coming sexual degradation

which was “more dayngerous Evills and filthie Uncleanness and other sins will followe than you

doe not Imagine or conceive.” Hutchinson’s spiritual reputation was at stake during the church

trial and her opinions even as questions was a danger to herself and others. Cotton spoke again

and again of the moral collapse that would follow in the wake of Hutchinson’s denials of a

natural immortality and physical resurrection.78 At one point in the trial Hutchinson interrupted

Cotton saying “All that I would say is this, that I did not hould any of these Thinges before my

Imprisonment.”79

Prior to Cotton cutting all remaining ties with Hutchinson, he insulted her, her son and

her son-in-law. Her eldest son Edward, and son-in-law Thomas Savage married to her oldest

daughter Faith spoke in her defense but their words were not heeded. Cotton continued to berate 76 Winship, Times and Trials, 127.


78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

59

Hutchinson using a diatribe of compliments, criticism and finally condemnation. Despite her

interruption, he embellished his accusations with the Puritan ideas of women rising above their

stations. He claimed Hutchinson used her position as midwife to apply undue influence over the

colony’s women. Cotton proceeded with these words: “Let me warn you and admonish to

consider seriously how these unsound tenets of yours, and the evil of your opinions do outweigh

all the good of your doings. Consider how many poor souls you have misled and how you have

conveyed the poison of your unsound principles into the hearts of many which it may be will

never be reduced again. . . .” 80

Other Puritans and Cotton had clashed in England over the dilemma of the covenant

theology adopted by the Anglican Church. Cotton did not rely heavily on good works as proof

of salvation and the covenant of grace. He feared that people would happily do good works in

their lifetime to attain a state of grace, and fail to understand the bible and its teachings. He

believed parishioners would follow the path of salvation while feeling the true spirit of God.

Hutchinson found these ideas in Cotton’s ministry very appealing yet she was left to fend for

herself when she freely interpreted what Cotton had sermonized.

In the second part of the trial the sick and exhausted Hutchinson prepared words for the

court. It must be realized that at this point she was already disenfranchised as were her family

and friends. She was banished from the colony and her husband was already setting up a new

home in Rhode Island. She read a recantation of her former views: “I spoke rashly and

unadvisedly. I do not allow the slighting of ministers, nor of the Scriptures, nor anything that is

set up by God. It was never in my heart to slight any man, but only that man should be kept in

his own place and not set in the room of God.”81


81 Ibid, 182.

60

Hutchinson’s statement of contrition was not viewed as such by the clergy. She read a

retraction of all errors she was charged with but did not appear to excuse herself with any

distinction of misunderstanding doctrine. She stated she was wrong in prophesying the

destruction of the colony and being disrespectful to the ministers. Moreover she was sorry that

she had drawn people away from hearing the ministers and their sermons. Hutchinson also

stated that sanctification could be evidence of justification “as it flowes from Christ and is

witnessed to us by the Spirit.”82

Reverend John Davenport argued that the spirit was not separate from the soul as

Hutchinson thought but that it was the life of the soul. Hutchinson replied “God by him hath

given me light.” Many took this to mean she was recanting her opinion or claimed she never

really held to it.83 Hutchinson showed no sign of a repentant sinner and she challenged

Shepard’s right to bring charges. While comparing Bulkeley to an amateur laymen she

confessed only to terminological confusion and not error.

Hutchinson claimed once again that it was her disrespect to the ministers and magistrates

at her civil trial that led to her errors. “If Mr. Shephard doth conceive that I had any of these

Thinges in my Minde [before the trial], then he is deceived.”84 But Shepard’s concern was that

while Hutchinson should show shame before the court, she still proceeded to berate others for

her treatment. Shepard was obsessed with Hutchinson’s excommunication from the church

despite her apparent recantations.




61

Deputy Governor Dudley, present at this session stated for the record that he knew of no

harm she had done since her imprisonment but he saw no repentance in her. He wondered out

loud if she had written her statement of repentance herself. He desired the ministers to question

her on the points of whether Hutchinson held errors before her imprisonment. How many

instances had she denied inherent graces before her imprisonment? It was not yet clear, but can

be assumed that the clergy was still trying to give her a way out if she would only completely

recant errors prior to and during her imprisonment that went against the nature of the doctrine

she was now being challenged upon.

The sticking point was now she must answer for what was said at her civil trial. It

appeared at one point she was stating she held none of the errors or opinions charged against her

at the church trial which came after her imprisonment on civil charges. While Hutchinson

confessed that she had spoken many things at her civil trial, she had not been prompted by these

new errors which the church charged. The ministers were moving toward excommunication

despite the Scripture saying that confession requires mercy. As far as she could in good

conscience, Hutchinson had confessed her errors.

Reverend John Wilson zealously took over the latter part of the church trial calling in the

age old excuse of commerce with the devil.

I look at her as a dangerous instrument of the Devil, raised up by Satan amongst us . . . The misgovernment of this woman’s tongue has been a great cause of this disorder which . . . set up herself and to draw disciples after her, and therefore she says one thing today another thing tomorrow . . . Therefore, we should sin against God if we should not put away from us so evil a woman, guilty of such foul evils.85

Wilson continued to sentence Hutchinson to further Hell while she remained quiet. A formal

answer was neither expected nor permitted from her, a mere woman.

85 David Hall, 384.

62

She was cast out of the church after three short years in the colony. She walked quietly

with only Mary Dyer whose life she saved during a difficult childbirth to accompany her out of

the church. Hutchinson was labeled a heretic and prophetess; on this day she was prepared to

accept God’s will. As she left the church, a man standing by the door broke the silence as the

women passed, “The Lord santifie this unto you.” Hutchinson replied: “Better to be cast out of

the church than to deny Christ.”86


63

Chapter FourMrs. Hutchinson Makes History for the Right Reasons

With the conclusion of her church trial, Hutchinson life as she knew it in Massachusetts

was over. However more indignities to her reputation as a midwife would continue to be leveled

at her. As she and Mary Dyer exited the church someone whispered the story of Dyer’s recent

birth to a monster. This remark reached Winthrop and prompted the investigation which caused

the child to be removed from its burial place in the forest and examined. This was the burial that

Hutchinson sought the guidance of Cotton, and he advised her to conceal the birth details.

Two days later Hutchinson received from the governor the official warrant ordering her

to leave Massachusetts before the end of the month.87 Once again as in England she packed her

belongings and children and headed out into the wilderness. The journey may have been

unknown but at least it released her from the jurisdiction of Winthrop’s government and personal

persecution. Throughout her notoriety for her conviction for heresy her midwifery was

intertwined in the key instruments of the arguments written after the trial. Winthrop described

Hutchinson as “the breeder and nourisher of all these distempers” and cast her followers as

offspring or “young branches, sprung out of an old root.”88

On March 28, 1638 Hutchinson headed to Rhode Island and met with her husband.

Winthrop kept up his persecution even from afar as he kept her under constant surveillance.

Back in Boston Winthrop continued with the lurid details of Dyer’s stillbirth and like to point out

87 Timothy Hall, 137.

88 David Hall, 262-263.

64

the connection between the monster delivered and the monstrous errors of Hutchinson.89 While

Reverend Cotton had displayed compassion for Mary Dyer when he advised Hutchinson to keep

her stillbirth private, his empathy was lacking when he later announced the news from Rhode

Island of Hutchinson’s delivery of “twenty-seven lumps of man’s seed without any alteration or

mixture of anything from the woman.”90 His announcement about the birth came from the pulpit

the Sunday he learned of it, and he speculated to the congregation that the incident was divine

punishment for her errors.91

His treatment of Dyer and Hutchinson was the difference in their roles in the Boston

community at the time of the respective stillbirths. Dyer still moved chiefly in a private realm as

wife and mother while Hutchinson had held powerful lectures that greatly affected the colony.

Therefore in his eyes, Hutchinson’s high profile justified the open display and discussion of

maternity and pregnancy.

The delivery of Hutchinson’s last child had occurred in May 1638 when she went into her

sixteenth labor from a troubled pregnancy and six weeks shy of the expected delivery date.

Hutchinson had given birth to a frightening anomaly which bore no resemblance to an infant.

Though the birth occurred a few months after Hutchinson’s banishment, Winthrop and Cotton

construed the monstrous birth as proof of Hutchinson’s heresy and a sign of God’s displeasure.

Her enemies continued to point to the strange occurrence as proof of her sinful nature and God’s

89 Lindal Buchanan, “A Study of Maternal Rhetoric: Anne Hutchinson, Monsters, and the Antinomian Controversy,” Rhetoric Review Vol. 25, No. 3 (2006): 249.

90 Winthrop, 326.


65

displeasure. Winthrop when hearing of the event asked for extensive details and wrote this in his

journal in addition to repeating the incident orally to everyone with whom he came into contact.92

The Puritans’ official history of the controversy, A Short Story of the Rise, reign, and

ruine of Antinomians, Familists & Libertines published anonymously in England in 1644 had a

preface written by Thomas Weld and the text by John Winthrop further covered the event. That

the men who persecuted her within the colony had such a pervasive interest in the unfortunate

event of a difficult childbirth by Hutchinson provides the evidence that her remarks toward them

still stung. The men continued to be frightened at the impacts of what a simple midwife had

done to their colony, their beliefs, and the social order.

It was a terrible time for Hutchinson in which her own body was discussed at length and

blame for her beliefs were considered the cause of her miscarriage. Reverend Weld reported:

“See how the wisdom of God fitted this judgment to her sin every day, for look as she had vented

misshapen opinion’s, so she must bring forth deformed monsters; and as those were public, and

not in a corner mentioned, so this is now come to be known and famous over all these churches

and a great part of the world.”93 If Hutchinson had not been associated with midwifery and its

cousin witchcraft this would not be broadcast to the great world by Weld. But he was a man of

his times and the mysteries of childbirth and the shared secrets of midwife skills handed down

over generations was not a consideration. The ministers were only interested in how they could

use Hutchinson’s stillborn baby as propaganda.

Hutchinson later heard through friends and family in Boston how Cotton had turned the

birth into an object lesson on the consequences of her doctrinal error. This prompted her to write

92 Battis, 247.

93 David Hall, 214-215.

66

a written admonition sent to the Boston church in March 1639. The elders did not read it

publicly to the congregation because she had been excommunicated and it has since been lost.

The last record of any official contact between her and the members of her former church

occurred when a delegation from Boston visited Portsmouth, Rhode Island a year later in March

1640 and she greeted them with suspicion denouncing them as “Whore and Strumpet.”94

Despite her great loss, Hutchinson appeared happy in Rhode Island though the

Massachusetts Bay Colony continued in its persecution of its midwives. While Hutchinson was

undergoing excommunication by her church, the midwife Jane Hawkins was being given two

months to get out of the colony. She was further ordered not to meddle in surgery or nursing of

any kind. While not the most powerful and famous of Hutchinson’s followers, she was a fellow

midwife, lower born than Hutchinson and not a member of the church, she had always been an

outcast except for when she joined the lectures at Hutchinson’s home.

The message of Hutchinson’s trials both civil and ecclesiastical were heeded by women

in Boston and outlaying communities. But there were many instances of persecution for

religious doctrine which occurred after she left the colony. Midwife Mary Dyer and at least four

other women were prosecuted for religious doctrine in Boston in the wake of Hutchinson’s

expulsion. Judith Smith in 1638 was charged with “obstinate persisting in sundry Errors;”

Katherine Finch that same year for “speaking against the magistrates and against the churches

and elders;” Widow Hammond in 1639 for saying that Mrs. Hutchinson “neyther deserved the

Censure which was putt upon her in the church, nor in the Common weale;” and Sarah Keayne in

1646 for “irregular prophesying mixed assemblies.”95 Anne Eaton, wife of the governor of New


95 Koehler, “American Jezebels,” 69-70.

67

Haven, Connecticut was excommunicated in 1644 for her “disavowal of infant baptism” and

other offences that came to light after she refused to admit to this error. Two years later, Lucy

Brewster was accused of “sympathizing with Eaton and of saying the Reverend John Davenport

made her ‘sermon sick.’96

The females in Salem, Massachusetts were an even greater problem when at least seven

women were called before the church or court for disorderly religious behavior in the late 1630s

and the 1640s. The religious crimes of all the women were interpreted as heresy. One, Mary

Oliver wanted the right “as a Christian” to church membership and was charged with “disturbing

the peace of the church” and reproaching elders and magistrates while offering dangerous

opinions. Governor Winthrop stated that Oliver “was far before Mrs. Hutchinson . . . for ability

of speech, and appearance of zeal and devotion and therefore was the fitter instrument to have

done hurt, but that she was poor and had little acquaintance.” She was not a midwife of

Hutchinson’s standing.97 Winthrop it seemed could not stop his comparisons of Hutchinson’s

crimes to others, and Winthrop more than any other authority kept her name in the forefront of

later observations on the colony’s culture.

In Rhode Island Hutchinson had freedom to teach her doctrines. Soon she was preaching

publicly and her following continued to grow and spread. In Massachusetts, Winthrop smarted

from her flourishing while living in Rhode Island. When her son Francis and new son-in-law

William Collins were visiting in Boston the magistrates ordered them to appear before the

governor. The two men refused and were given stiff fines. The fines were not only to punish

them but as Winthrop admitted, to compensate Massachusetts for all the expenses incurred

96 Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period,” American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978): 587.

97 Winthrop, 281-82.

68

because of Hutchinson. He blamed her for the expenses of the trials, the synod and the cost of

persecution of her family and other followers of the Hutchinsonians.98

Hutchinson was a woman of strong religious beliefs. But she would be undone by more

earthly matters in 1642 when her husband William died. This was a huge blow for Hutchinson

herself could not have survived her trials without his acknowledged comfort and support. She

later set out with her son-in-law William Collins and other Rhode Island families for the Dutch

settlement on Long Island, still far away from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Rhode Island’s

future was in doubt from the land-hungry New England colonies so Hutchinson took her

youngest children west to Dutch New Amsterdam, one day the site of New York City.99

This was to be her last home; she lived alone with her children and only two neighbors

for miles around. In September of 1643 she was massacred along with her children in a raid by

Siwanoy Indians. One child, the nine-year-old Susanna survived the slaughter. This was a local

war between the Dutch and Amerindians who were killing all settlers occupying the native’s

land. Vindictively, Reverend Weld in Roxbury reported her murder back to friends in England:

Mistress Hutchinson, being weary of the Island, or rather the Island weary of her, departed from thence—to live under the Dutch. . . . And now I am come to the last act of her tragedy, a most heavy stroke upon herself and hers. . . . There the Indians set upon them and slew her and all her family. . . . 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 therein, to pick out this woeful woman, to make her and those belonging to her, an unheard of heavy example. . . . Thus the Lord heard our groans to heaven and freed us from this great and sore affliction. 100

98 William Hubbard, A General History of New England, from the Discovery to MDCLXXX, 2nd ed. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown), 342-343.


100 Buchanan, 255.

69

Within three months of Hutchinson’s murder on Long Island another Anne Hutchinson

was born in Boston. She was the daughter of the eldest Hutchinson Edward and his wife

Katherine. Her legacy lived on through her ancestors and through the writings of the men

involved in her trials and persecution.

70

Conclusion

Ironically, Anne Marbury Hutchinson who rejected the idea of afterlife achieved instant

immorality following her murder. Leaving a world behind in England the literate Anne

Hutchinson had sailed to Massachusetts Bay with her husband and children. Here she learned to

inhabit a world where the vast majority of women could not even write their own names. Yet

she boldly emerged to question the leaders of the day about the nature of salvation and grace and

it started with her fellow women in a simple book club studying the Bible. Her neighbor and

fellow protestant Governor Winthrop called her the “instrument of Satan.”101 Rather than

succumb to religious despair as many of her peers, she chose to overturn the patriarchal

domination of women in Puritan Massachusetts and challenge the right to free religious

speech.102 Hutchinson had failed to change the world immediately in her own lifetime but the

summation of this midwife’s life and trials prove she moved her ideals of free speech before the

women of her Bible group into a future where being a midwife did not hold one back. Her twice

weekly meetings tested the waters for freedom of speech, assembly and religion and she multi-

tasked all this with her midwifery and nursing duties.

Historians have placed Hutchinson in a variety of roles: an example of a woman who

stepped out of her place in colonial New England, one who would not accept the teachings of the

church she claimed to support, psychologically disturbed individual with a weak husband, and a

misunderstood heroine. However, these depictions isolate Hutchinson from the historical

context of a midwife who held a book club meeting in her home. Some sources such as Mary

Rowlandson’s traditional captivity narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God . . .: Being

101 David Hall, 300.

102 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “John Winthrop’s City of Women,” Massachusetts Historical Society 3, (2001): 19-48, accessed February 21, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25081160.

71

a Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682) depict Rowlandson as

a virtuous Puritan woman who resisted the evil advances of known savages. But her history was

published after Hutchinson herself has died and cannot be compared to a traditional midwife’s

life. Her narrative is a good example for the men of the time to use; for she can be held up as a

virtuous women despite the unfortunate event of being held captive by Amerindians.

Hutchinson could have comfortably led a life in England but instead opted to follow

fellow parishioners as a part of the congregation of the Reverend Cotton. This led to her

realization that the women of the colony needed a “women’s club” to discuss the issues of the

day freely and the main issue in the colony was religion. Thus she started the meetings at her

house and interpreted the Scriptures for other women. What started as a midwives’

conversational group soon found itself involved in a particularly nasty controversy on

Antinomianism. A chain of events was in place: Hutchinson wanted to speak freely outside the

confines of a birthing room and provide spiritual guidance and entertainment of sorts for her

friends and neighbors and stepped into a breach of etiquette that most midwives would have

avoided.

Possibly Hutchinson was blinded by her admiration for the Reverend Cotton and

depended on him to protect her. Since she went to him when in a dilemma over Mary Dyer’s

stillborn baby, she believed that as a midwife she was doing the right thing in consulting a

trusted member of the clergy to ensure she was well within her bounds of authority by burying

the child and obliquely concealing the truth of its birth condition. Hutchinson knew how these

ideas of monstrous births worked; that charges of witchcraft and interference with authorities

would draw undue attention to her and Dyer. That he knew she followed his words, and yet he

did nothing about it when she was in trouble speaks to the fact that Cotton did not think much of

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Hutchinson’s particular talent to rally the women and later the men of the colony. His forgotten

recollection of events at her civil trial proves he may have believed in her ability as a midwife as

noted in previous comments about her skills, but he was not prepared to support her in an

ecclesiastical argument.

After settling comfortably in Boston, Will and Anne Hutchinson both testified at the

church, “he in public before the church, and she in private in writing, that they had experienced

saving grace and thus elect.”103 The church was well aware of her and her husband’s beliefs

since they were accepted into the church despite the Reverend Symmes damming commentary of

what happened aboard the ship which brought Hutchinson to the colony. Hutchinson had easily

passed the examination; she had many friends and gained a good reputation while aboard ship as

a midwife and healer.104 But the incident with Symmes taught Hutchinson that Boston was not

quite the Puritan utopia she and her family had sought, yet somehow with her knowledge of

healing and midwifery she had every expectation of fitting into her new life. In her early days in

Boston Hutchinson was only a midwife, albeit one who was well-educated which was not

unusual. Not all midwives were educated only in nursing; many were high-born or from wealthy

families. Only her words were causing her trouble at this time since no one had yet to tie Bible

study groups for a women as being a factor in colonial disorder.

Hutchinson’s talents and spirit made her an exceptional woman but in the seventeenth

century woman were not expected to be talented or exceptional in politics or religion. Even

though a wife might voice opinions in her own home and have the ear of her husband, outside

that environment a woman was expected to remain silent and Hutchinson could not seem to fill

103 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay 1764, Reprint (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 129.

104 Ibid.

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that conventional role. She deftly filled the role as the colony’s midwife and healer, but outside

of this role she was not accorded the same right to opinions as the men.

This midwife became the center of a convergence of circumstances. The arrival on a

later ship of Sir Henry Vane who became governor and supporter of the Hutchinsonians

challenged Winthrop’s leadership. Governor Winthrop was too lenient in disciplining the

colonies and stories of colonial conflict and religion had reached the ears of Parliament in

England and Vane would later replace him. After Reverend Williams was expelled from his

church and colony for his religious views, more dissenters followed. Williams left to found the

town of Providence in the colony of Rhode Island where he encouraged religious toleration.

New elections for governorship were held and Vane became governor in May 1636, becoming

an active member at Hutchinson’s meetings. Though ill-trained in governorship, he became a

friend of Hutchinson’s and was undoubtedly aware of her movements within the community of

women. She continued her midwifery work, aware of the politics around her, but still firm in her

conviction that she followed Reverend Cotton’s words and works and therefore was under no

suspicion of being accused of disrupting colonial affairs.

But Winthrop was worried. He was alarmed by the presence of any friction or division

within the colony since he had lost his governorship for being too lax. His suspicions were

heightened by Hutchinson’s involvement in so many of the women’s activities of the day.

Winthrop was unsettled by her powerful words and her teachings which appealed to both male

and female members of the colony. When Governor Vane succumbed to the pressures of

running a colony and announced in late 1637 he would return to England, Winthrop acted

quickly. He called the assembly which accepted Vane’s resignation and gathered support to

become re-elected. Now was the time he would act to stop the men from their troublesome

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sermons, but make sure the women remained at home and did not bring rumors of unrest to the

English parliament.

Doom for Hutchinson’s women’s reading group was already in the air. Hutchinson

continued to deliver babies, nurse sick neighbors and became pregnant one last time. She held

her assemblies even though Winthrop had passed a law saying that such assemblies were illegal.

For her she was still both a spiritual advisor to women and a midwife. Bedside chatter still went

on among the women, there was nothing that could stop this until she would be tried in court and

become prisoner awaiting her church excommunication.

There would be no more nursing or midwife duties for Hutchinson after her civil court

trial and excommunication from the church. “The Prisoner,” as Winthrop took to calling her that

winter after her trial, was restricted from seeing but little of her children or virtually no

supporters which were the governor’s intent. “It was the court’s intention to isolate the prisoner

and reduce her support. Winthrop was determined that no one should be inspired by her or

spread news of her.”105 Anne Hutchinson’s religious inflexibility was probably as great as that of

the men who accused her of heresy. This midwife’s struggle would later play a role in the

foundation of American religious freedom, but she was not to know this at the time.

Hutchinson was considered by a church trial to have rejected the idea of an afterlife. The

irony is she achieved instant immortality after her murder. Within months of her death, Weld

used Winthrop’s extensive notes and documents on the Hutchinsonian controversy and published

a tract in early 1644. Weld used himself as editor and Winthrop as the eye witness in the book

titled A Short Story of the Rise, Reign and ruin of the Antinomians, Familist and Libertines, that

inflicted the Churches of New England. The book arrived in England as the Puritans were facing

105 Winthrop, 243.

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off in a struggle against the monarchy of Charles I and quarreling over what form their religion

should take in replacing Anglicanism.106

When the English Civil War and subsequent rule by Oliver Cromwell came to a close in

1660 with the restoration of the monarch Charles II, son of the beheaded King Charles I there

were two former participants in the Hutchinsonian controversy put to death. Oddly, one from

each side of the controversy died. Hugh Peter, a foe of Hutchinson107 was publicly

disemboweled and hanged from the scaffold for having preached sermons urging the death of the

King’s father Charles I, in 1649. Also executed was Hutchinson’s powerful supporter, ex-

governor Henry Vane who was accused of having handing over to Parliament notes that brought

death to Charles I’s Minister Thomas Wentworth who was hanged in 1641. Old gossip reared its

head in which it was claimed both Hutchinson and Mary Dyer had returned to England with

Henry Vane in August 1637; he “debauched them both and both were delivered of monsters.”108

Even though Hutchinson’s attempts to create a study group for the women of the colony

were unsuccessful, Governor Winthrop failed to silence her. Winthrop actually assured her a

place in history when he allowed her to speak at her trial and excommunication. Later, in the

nineteenth century, historians recognized her struggle as one of the earliest battles against

religious intolerance in American history. A reading of John Winthrop’s journals shows he was

greatly affected by her actions throughout his governorship of the Bay Colony. When Abigail

106 Karyn Valerius, “So Manifest a Signe from Heaven: Monstrosity and Heresy in the Antinomian Controversy,” The New England Quarterly 83, No. 2 (June 2010): 191, accessed February 12, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20752690.


108 Hutchinson, 129.

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Adams wrote to her husband, John, a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776, she said

“Remember the Ladies.” 109 Anne Hutchinson is one of the ladies historians remember.

Appendix

The version used in this thesis is the version edited by Mark C. Carnes and Michael P.

Winship in their book The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law and Intolerance in Puritan

New England for purposes of clarity.

109 Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic (Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 9.

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Gov. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: I am called here to answer before you but I hear no things laid to my

charge.

Gov. John Winthrop: I have told you some already and more I can tell you.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Name one, Sir.

Gov. John Winthrop: Have I not named some already?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: What have I said or done?

Gov. John Winthrop: Why for your doings, this you did harbor and countenance those that are

parties in this faction that you have heard of.

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Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: That's matter of conscience, Sir.

Gov. John Winthrop: Your conscience you must keep, or it must be kept for you.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Must not I then entertain the saints because I must keep my

conscience?

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: What law do they transgress?

Gov. John Winthrop: The law of God and of the state.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: In what particular?

Gov. John Winthrop: Why in this among the rest, whereas the Lord doth say honour thy father

and thy mother.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Ey Sir in the Lord.

Gov. John Winthrop: This honour you have broke in giving countenance to them.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: In entertaining those did I entertain them against any act (for there is

the thing) or what God has appointed?

Gov. John Winthrop: You knew that Mr. Wheelwright did preach this sermon and those that

countenance him in this do break a law.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: What law have I broken?

Gov. John Winthrop: Why the fifth commandment.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: I deny that for he (Mr. Wheelwright) saith in the Lord.

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Gov. John Winthrop: You have joined with them in the faction.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: In what faction have I joined with them?

Gov. John Winthrop: In presenting the petition.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Suppose I had set my hand to the petition. What then?

Gov. John Winthrop: You saw that case tried before.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: But I had not my hand to (not signed) the petition.

Gov. John Winthrop: You have councelled them.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Wherein?

Gov. John Winthrop: Why in entertaining them.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: What breach of law is that, Sir?

Gov. John Winthrop: Why dishonouring the commonwealth, Mrs. Hutchinson.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: 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. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: If I entertain them, as they have dishonoured their parents I do.

Gov. John Winthrop: No but you by countenancing them above others put honor upon them.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: I may put honor upon them as the children of God and as they do

honor the Lord.

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: I do acknowledge no such thing. Neither do I think that I ever put any

dishonour upon you.

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Gov. John Winthrop: Why do you keep such a meeting at your house as you do every week

upon a set day?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: 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. John Winthrop: . . . By what warrant do you continue such a course?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: 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. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: 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. John Winthrop: 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.

Hutchinson ...

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Will it please you to answer me this and to give me a rule for then I

will willingly submit to any truth, Mrs. Hutchinson If any come to my house to be instructed in

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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. John Winthrop: We do not call you to teach the court but to lay open yourself....

(The argument over the broken rule continues)

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: Sir, I do not believe that to be so.

Gov. John Winthrop: Well, we see how it is. We must therefore put it away from you or

restrain you from maintaining this course.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: If you have a rule for it from God's word you may.

Gov. John Winthrop: We are your judges, and not you ours and we must compel you to it.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: If it please you by authority to put it down I will freely let you for I am

subject to your authority....

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Deputy Gov. 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. Anne Hutchinson: I pray, Sir, prove it that I said they preached nothing but a covenant of

works.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: Nothing but a covenant of works. Why a Jesuit may preach truth

sometimes.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Did I ever say they preached a covenant of works then?

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: If they do not preach a covenant of grace clearly, then they preach

a covenant of works.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: No, Sir. One may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than

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another, so I said....

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: When they do preach a covenant of works do they preach truth?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Yes, Sir. But when they preach a covenant of works for salvation that

is not truth.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: I do but ask you this: when the ministers do preach a covenant of

works do they preach a way of salvation?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: I did not come hither to answer questions of that sort.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: Because you will deny the thing.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Ey, but that is to be proved first.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: I will make it plain that you did say that the ministers did preach a

covenant of works.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: I deny that.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: And that you said they were not able ministers of the New

Testament, but Mr. Cotton only.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: If ever I spake that I proved it by God's word.

Court: Very well, very well.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: If one shall come unto me in private, and desire me seriously to tell

them what I thought of such a one, I must either speak false or true in my answer.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: 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. Anne Hutchinson: I deny this for if I should so say I should speak against my own

judgment....

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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 ministers 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. Anne Hutchinson: 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 Hutchinson

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. Thomas Dudley: I called these witnesses and you deny them. You see they have

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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. Anne Hutchinson: Prove that I said so.

Gov. John Winthrop: Did you say so?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: No, Sir, it is your conclusion.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: What do I do charging of you if you deny what is so fully proved?

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: ...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. Thomas Dudley: There have been six witnesses to prove this and yet you deny it.

(Then he mentions a seventh, Mr. Nathaniel Ward)

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: 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. John Winthrop: 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

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therefore give you a little more time to consider of it and therefore desire that you attend the

court again in the morning.

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: After that they have taken an oath I will make good what I say.

Gov. John Winthrop: 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,

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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. Thomas Dudley: Let her witnesses be called.

Gov. John Winthrop: Who be they?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Mr. Leveret and our teacher and Mr. Coggeshall.

Gov. John Winthrop: Mr. Coggeshall was not present.

Mr. Coggeshall: Yes, but I was. Only I desired to be silent till I should be called.

Gov. John Winthrop: 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. John Winthrop: 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 entreaty 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. John Winthrop: Don't you remember that she said they were not able ministers of the

New Testament?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: Mr. Weld and I had an hour's discourse at the window and then I

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spake that, if I spake it...

Gov. John Winthrop: 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.

(There was more back and forth between Rev. John Cotton, trying to defend Mrs. Hutchinson,

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and Mr. Peters, about exactly what Mrs. Hutchinson said)

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: 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. Anne Hutchinson: How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son,

being a breach of the sixth commandment?

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: By an immediate voice.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: So to me by an immediate revelation.

Dep. Gov. Thomas Dudley: How! An immediate revelation.

90

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: By the voice of his own spirit to my soul. I will give you another

scripture, Jeremiah 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. Thomas Dudley: What is the scripture she brings?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: But now having seen him which is invisible I fear not what man can

do unto me.

Gov. John Winthrop: Daniel was delivered by miracle; do you think to be deliver'd so too?

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson: I do here speak it before the court. I look that the Lord should deliver

me by his providence.... 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. Anne Hutchinson: It may be so....

Gov. John Winthrop: I am persuaded that the revelation she brings forth is delusion

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(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. John Winthrop: 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. John Winthrop: 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. Anne Hutchinson: I desire to know wherefore I am banished?

Gov. John Winthrop: Say no more. The court knows wherefore and is satisfied.110

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