Events that today would be explained by science, luck, or coincidence were explained in Biblical terms. Services were held in spare meetinghouses without altars or statuary. There was no singing or formal liturgy. No Christmas or wedding celebrations, no carnivals or sacred places. It was all rather severe. It was all that was left them. Women could not be ministers, could not vote on church matters, and could not even talk in church. They entered the church meetinghouse through a separate door and sat together on a separate side of the building.
Her meetings grew in popularity. She added a second weekly session to accommodate all the women who wanted to hear her wisdom. Hutchinson began to raise eyebrows in the colony when word leaked that in her study groups she had questioned the Biblical interpretations of local ministers in their sermons.
In particular, Anne took issue with ministers who suggested that people need to display their faith, perform good deeds, and act as a decent Puritan should in order to show that they have been saved. The Puritan ministers undoubtedly saw a problem with the suggestion that people could sit idly by and expect salvation—it was all too easy and might discourage rule-following and even, God forbid, skipping church services.
The crisis deepened in when Hutchinson, upset with a sermon being delivered by John Wilson, a minister hand-picked by Governor Winthrop to replace a minister favored by Anne, stood up and walked out of the meetinghouse.
A number of other women followed her out. For Hutchinson, things turned toward the better. Her political supporter, Henry Vane, was elected governor, replacing John Winthrop. And she soon found a new minister who shared her theological views. John Wheelwright arrived from England in May , and began preaching in Boston the next month.
Anne Hutchinson was called to a meeting in December She faced a panel of seven ministers who demanded to know her views on the Scripture and on their own preaching. Two and a half months later, ministers meeting in Cambridge for a Synod identified 82 errors held by Hutchinson that had been recorded in their meeting with her.
Winthrop succeeded in dispatching Reverend Wheelwright to Mount Wollaston, where he could cause less harm. May 17, was a turning point in the history of Massachusetts Bay. Magistrates and freemen assembled in Cambridge Common to decide who would control the colony. Supporters of John Winthrop and his orthodox theology carried the day. Winthrop was elected Governor for a second time, replacing Henry Vane, who had been strongly backed by the Hutchinson.
When Winthrop decided to put Hutchinson on trial, he determined that his prospects for conviction were better in Cambridge than in Boston. The residents of Cambridge tended to be landed gentry and more conservative than the residents of Boston, who held more mercantile interests.
The trial of Anne Hutchinson began on November 7, in a thatched-roof meetinghouse in Cambridge. The daughter of a discredited Anglican clergyman, Francis Marbury, she grew up in an atmosphere of learning and was taught to question authority. Her father instilled her with independent thinking and her mother, Bridget, taught her about herbal medicines.
In , she married William Hutchinson, a merchant, and the couple became followers of Anglican minister John Cotton. Like many Puritans of his time, Cotton was suppressed for his religious views in the Protestant-led Church of England. In , he migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a year later Hutchinson and her husband followed. Everyone was to follow the direction of the elders, and women, in particular, were to play a submissive and supporting role. After settling in Boston, Hutchinson served as a midwife and herbalist.
Concerned about maintaining order in their community and protecting their exclusive position as sole interpreters of the Bible, the magistrates quickly confronted any deviance from their strict doctrine. The growing tensions of the era became known as the Antinomian Controversy. Concerned about maintaining order in their new community, the ministers in Boston preached that people must live according to biblical precepts, thus demonstrating good works and upholding the moral order.
Anne Hutchinson embraced the idea that salvation came about only when God granted it; she believed that human will and action played no role in salvation. Her unorthodox views did not end there. She suggested that an individual could know God's will directly, and that some people received revelation directly from God.
This threatened the ministers' role as interpreters of the Bible. As Hutchinson's following grew, the magistrates decided that she was a dangerous woman who must be stopped. They charged her with sedition for undermining the authority of the ministers and heresy for expressing religious beliefs at odds with those of the colony's religious leaders.
Winthrop described her as "a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, a nimble wit and active spirit, a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man. Her trial was extraordinary. Much of the testimony concerned the "crime" she had committed by daring, as a woman, to speak and teach men in public.
Governor John Winthrop condemned her meetings as a "thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for your sex. She boldly answered each of his questions with challenging questions of her own. He responded angrily: "You have rather been a Husband than a Wife and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a subject.
Winthrop challenged her authority to speak, and she defended herself in biblical terms. He claimed that she had defamed the ministers by accusing them of preaching a covenant of works and not being able ministers of the New Testament. She retorted, "Prove that I said so," and would acknowledge only using the words of the Apostles. Anne mounted a skillful defense, but her intelligence and eloquence rankled the magistrates, who resented her lecturing them.
Then Anne Hutchinson essentially convicted herself. She declared that her knowledge of the truth came as direct revelation from God, a heresy in Puritan Massachusetts. The astonished magistrates leapt upon what they considered a false teaching and proclaimed her guilt: "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.
Hutchinson refused to recant and accepted her exile. In the spring of she and her family left Massachusetts Bay for the more tolerant Providence Plantation founded by Roger Williams. After her husband died, she moved to New Amsterdam. She was put on trial in , convicted and banished from Massachusetts. Hutchinson's story is one chapter in the long struggle to establish the constitutional principle of religious freedom.
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