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Anne Hutchinson ~ Boston, Massachusetts
When the ship "Griffin" arrived in the
port of Boston, on the 18th day of September, 1634, that band of
Puritan settlers who set forth from the embryo town to meet and
welcome the newcomers would have been very much disturbed and
astonished if they had known that there was one among that
ship's company who was to bring great trouble to the feeble
Colony and still greater calamity upon herself. Anne Hutchinson
was to play the most conspicuous part in a great religious
controversy; it was something more vital than a mere theological
dispute; it was the first of many New England quickenings in the
direction of social, intellectual and political development; in
fact New England's earliest protest against formulas. Its leader
was a woman whose name should be written large as one of the
very few women who have really influenced the course of events
in American history. It is indeed curious that at that time,
when women held such an inferior position in the intellectual
world, heads of councils of state and hoary-headed ministers
should have allowed themselves to be involved in controversy in
which their chief adversary was a woman.
Anne Hutchinson was born at Alford, in
Lincolnshire, not far from Boston, England, on the 28th of July,
1591, so that she must have been forty-three years old when she
came to Boston, though her comely figure and attractive face and
engaging manners gave her a much more youthful appearance. Her
father was a college man and her mother was a great-aunt of the
poet Dryden, and was also related to the family from which
descended the famous writer, Jonathan Swift, so Anne from both
parents inherited intellect and force. Her marriage with William
Hutchinson was the result of pure and dis-interested love, for
he had no right to heraldic devices. Of this husband little need
be said. He is described by contemporaries as a man of very mild
temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife. Perhaps
this was fortunate, considering his wife's strong and dominant
will.
Things might have gone well for Mistress
Hutchinson in the Colony had she not fallen into some heated
disputes on certain religious subjects with one of her fellow
voyagers on board the "Griffin." This resulted in her
adversary's, the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, gaining a deep and
bitter animosity toward her. No sooner had they landed than he
took occasion to denounce her as a prophetess, a dangerous
accusation in those days. Regardless of her "Reverend" foe she
immediately began to teach her new strange doctrines to those
about her. And almost all of Puritan Boston fell under the spell
of her eloquence and her magnetic charm. The women crowded her
home to hear her read from the Scriptures and explain texts,
and, it must be admitted, criticized the preachers, for this
powerful woman was not afraid to express her opinion with
dangerous candor. Boston was really at that period under a
religious despotism. Looking back upon those times, it seems
strange that the early Puritan settlers, beset as they were with
bodily danger and physical hardship, should have spent so much
of their time in splitting hairs upon theological subjects.
It was, nevertheless, significant of an
intellectual unrest, which was to result in people doing their
own thinking. This has always been a marked characteristic of
the American, one of which we are justly particular, and it
should be remembered that this young woman was its pioneer.
Mistress Anne Hutchinson taught that the Gospel of Christ had
superseded the law of Moses that no matter what sin overtook one
who had received the gift of the "Crest of Love," he was still
one of the elect; that the spirit of the Holy Ghost dwells in a
"Justified Person," and other things that nobody understands and
nobody is foolish enough to bother about in these days. In 1634,
Mistress Hutchinson and her followers and the ministers of the
Boston Church wrangled over these confusing and unnecessary
doctrines until it is very likely they themselves became very
much mixed up. It is what historians call the Antinomian
Controversy. Antinomy being opposed to the law, Winthrop and
Endicott considered it a very dangerous heresy. Mistress Anne
was finally brought to trial for her teachings a thing she could
hardly have failed to expect, for though she was a gentle and
patient nurse to the sick, a fond wife and mother, and a Godly
woman, still she was transgressing her right in openly setting
up a new creed among the people with whom she had chosen to
dwell. Among the ministers there were two of whom she earnestly
approved, the Rev. Mr. Cotton and Joseph Wheelwright, her
brother-in-law. But the preaching and teachings of all the
others she earnestly condemned, which made these narrow-minded
spiritual ministers her mortal enemies. In 1637, the Rev. John
Cotton, who had appeared to share Anne Hutchinson's opinions to
some extent, changed his course and the way was prepared for her
accusation and trial This trial was before the Court of
Magistrates, at Cambridge, November, 1637, and to quote from
Jared Sparks, "It will be allowed by most readers to have been
one of the most shameful proceedings recorded in the annals of
Protestantism." The scene must have been an impressive one, the
dignified Governor Winthrop, grave, strong, courteous, but
already convinced of the culprit's guilt; Endicott, who, as
Hawthorne says, "Would stand with his drawn sword at the Gate of
Heaven and resist to the death all pilgrims thither except they
traveled his own path"; Bradstreet, Nowell; Stoughton, Welde,
all her judges and her enemies. As the biting north wind swept
cold gusts through the bare room in which the assemblage sat on
that November day, the defenseless woman must have felt that the
cold gale that blew from the gloomy wilderness on the desolate
shore was no more chilling than the hearts of her judges. She
was ill and faint, but she was allowed neither food nor a seat
during that long exhausting day, until she fell to the floor
from weakness, while first one and then another of them plied
her with questions. And, as Anne Hutchinson answered these
questions clearly and sensibly, quoting passages from the
Scriptures to prove that she had done nothing unlawful, nothing
worthy of condemnation, perhaps she may have felt, even among
her enemies and with no hand stretched out toward her, a thrill
of pride in her heart that she, a woman without the influence of
wealth or station, was pitting her intellect against that of the
wisest men in the Colony. No matter what the issue should be the
fact of her trial was an acknowledgment of her power and
influence, a power and influence never before nor since equaled
in this country.
Of an intensely spiritual nature and of
rare elevation of purpose, Anne Hutchinson stood that day for
the principle of liberty of speech, and the seed planted almost
three hundred years ago has grown into the glorious religious
and intellectual freedom of today.
At the conclusion of the trial, when she
heard the verdict of banishment, Anne Hutchinson, turning to
Winthrop said boldly, "I desire to know wherefore I am
banished." He replied, with high-handed superciliousness, "Say
no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied."
Joseph Welde was the brother of Rev.
Thomas Welde, who had been her bitterest enemy, and he had
called her the "American Jezebel," so she had little to expect
in the way of consideration and comfort. But the banished woman
had followers and the court found it expedient to issue an order
that "All those whose names are under written shall upon warning
give all such guns, pistols, swords, pewter shot and matches
over to their custody upon penalty of 10 pounds.'' This shows
that the magistrates feared violence from those who believed in
Mistress Hutchinson and loved and revered their teacher.
Having been excommunicated from the
Boston Church, and admonished for her grievous sins she was
ordered to leave Massachusetts by the end of March. And on the
twenty-eighth of that month Anne Hutchinson set forth upon her
journey to Aquidneck, Rhode Island, where she hoped to commune
with God and her fellow-beings according to the dictates of her
conscience. Many Bostonians followed her and amid the forests of
Rhode Island she found for a little while a peaceful life. But
even here she was not spared from her old persecutors, who still
feared that a new sect might arise in their neighborhood. Mrs.
Hutchinson, whose husband had died, determined to go into the
Dutch Colony of the New Netherlands where the magistrates did
not care quite so much what the colonists believed, and
eventually she planned her settlement in the solitude of what is
now called Rochelle. A swamp in the vicinity of her cottage
still bears the name of Hutchinson's river and we may imagine
how as the evening shades closed in upon them the settlers would
gather around their leader, who read from the Scriptures and
exhorted them to continue steadfast in the faith she had
delivered to them. As the candle-lights shone and flickered on
her strong face with its lines of struggle and of sorrow and was
reflected in the deep, dark eyes, she seemed a woman who had
fled away to this remote spot divinely inspired.
But she had chosen a bad time to come to
this part of the country, for while safe from the men of her own
race, who had given her nothing but injustice and persecution,
she was surrounded by dangers from the natives. Governor Kieft,
the Dutch Governor, had by cruel treatment aroused the Indians
to sullen resentment. Not long after the arrival of Anne
Hutchinson and her little colony, savage hostilities broke out.
Suddenly, when the New Netherlanders were unprepared, an army of
fifteen hundred swarthy warriors swept over Long Island,
killing, burning and torturing the settlers on Manhattan Island
and carrying their savage warfare to the very gates of the fort.
Far out across the Harlem River, Anne
Hutchinson's weak settlement of sixteen souls was at the mercy
of the merciless Indians. The chief who had entered the land of
this section according to tribal laws had sent to find out the
strength and weakness of the colony. The messenger was treated
with the hospitality which it was a part of Anne Hutchinson's
religion to show to the "Stranger" who came within her gates.
But the Indian spy was the messenger of death, for that night
the colony was attacked and every one of that little settlement
perished by clubs or tomahawks. Anne Hutchinson and her children
with the exception of one, perished in the flames of her
cottage, the cries of the massacred mingling in her dying ears
with the savage shouts of the fiendish murderers. The little
girl eight years old, who escaped was sent back by the Dutch to
New England, where a good many of her descendants live.
It was the custom of the Indians to take
the name of a person they had killed, and the chief who led this
attack called himself after the massacre, "Anne's Hoeck," which
is ground for the belief that the great chief himself was her
murderer. The neck of land at Pelham, New York, bears to this
day the name of Anne's Hoeck or Anne's Hook.
This brave woman's death was the end of
the theological tragedy of early Boston, but it was the
beginning of that religious freedom we enjoy today.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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