The reason I picked this topic is because I admire Anne Hutchinson and the history of her

life and I strongly believe in the rights of the individual to freedom of thought, freedom of

speech, and the freedom to worship. She is a real hero because she faced adversity but she

refused to betray her ideals or ethics no matter what the cost was.


Anne Hutchinson, was born Anne Marbury, in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, in July,

1591, the daughter of Bridget Dryden and Francis Marbury, a deacon at Christ Church,

Cambridge. She was the second of 13 children. For years everyone in England had been

Catholic. Then, almost 100 years before Anne was born, King Henry VIII of England, the leader

at the time, left the Catholic Church. He wanted to divorce his wife, but the Catholic Church

would not let its members get divorced. Because he was determined to end his marriage, he

started a new church called the Church of England. He made himself head of this church and

from that time until today, the king or queen of England has also been the ruler of the Church of

England. The English people wanted a more relaxed and simple form of worship that would be

less formal than the Catholic Church. These people were known as the Puritans, because they

wanted a pure religion without the rules and ceremonies of Catholicism.


Several members of Anne’s mother’s family were Puritans, and her father, Reverend
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Marbury, was accused of being a Puritan. He did not approve of the way the church selected

ministers. Some men became preachers because their families knew political rulers or because

they were wealthy. Reverend Marbury, on the other hand, had spent years going to school and

earning his degree at Cambridge University. In fact, he spoke against untrained ministers so

much that he was even thrown in jail and not allowed to preach for several years.


     Because her father had always expressed his opinions, Anne Marbury grew up feeling

free to speak her mind. She often heard him disagree with the rules of the Church of England.

During the time that Rev. Marbury was not allowed to preach, he spent time farming his fields,

writing and teaching Anne about the Bible. Because her father was an educated man, he was able

to give Anne a better education than most young English girls received. Anne developed an

interest in religion and theology at a very young age. She found there were as many new

questions about faith as there seemed to be answers. She had grown to admire her father's ideals

and assertiveness, and wasn't afraid of questioning the principles of faith and the authority of the

Church, as is usually the case with anyone who has had the benefit of a good education.


At the age of 21, Anne married Will Hutchinson, and settled down in Alford, where she

took on the role of housewife and mother, while retaining a vivid interest in theology and the

Church. She and her family followed the sermons of John Cotton, a young Protestant minister

whose teachings echoed those of her father's, but were now more commonly accepted under the

increasingly popular banner of Puritanism.


As much as Anne's father had been criticized and condemned for his views, many

Protestants had grown increasingly concerned with the level of corruption within the Catholic
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Church, and to a certain degree within the Protestant Church; a new reformist movement known

as Puritanism has evolved, thus named because it's main objective was to "purify" the National

Church of all Catholic influence.


One of the Church of England’s ideas that most bothered Anne was called the Covenant

of Works. Under the Covenant of Works, church leaders made rules for people and believed that

the truly religious people were the ones who obeyed the rules. They believed that the only way

for people to get to heaven was to keep from sinning and to do many good deeds, this Covenant

also bothered John Cotton. He believed that all people were sinners and that a person could not

do enough good work to earn God’s love. He believed that people were saved and sent to heaven

by complete faith in God, and not by holy actions. This later became known as the Covenant of

Grace. This was the Covenant that Anne strongly believed in, especially after the death of her

two daughters, this was the only thing that consoled her, she was convinced that God’s love was

more important than good works. But the more she and others believed in it, the more the Church

of England wanted to stop it. After John Cotton’s arrest in 1622, he decided to leave England and

move to a place where he could preach what he truly believed.


In 1632 John Cotton decided to leave quickly because authorities were after him. In 1633

he sailed to America. Will and Anne Hutchinson, along with their 11 children, soon followed

suit, sailing to America with John Winthrop and other colonists on the Griffin, in the hopes of

practicing their faith in an environment more favorable to the new ideas of Puritanism. Anne had

high hopes for a life in the colonies, thinking it would be a haven for those who wished to

worship God as they saw fit.

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Anne Hutchinson would eventually come to realize that the hardships of colonial life and

the rigid union of Church and State were more stifling than liberating, and there wasn't really any

real "religious freedom" to speak of in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially for an educated

English woman such as herself. Anne Hutchinson's only sin was being able to think for herself in

an age when women were considered to be nothing more than servants for their husbands, meant

to bring as many children as they could into the world, and raise them. These were rules strictly

enforced by the Puritans, who, in accordance to the teachings of the Old Testament of the Bible,

viewed women as morally feeble creatures, who like Eve before them would no doubt lead men

to damnation if allowed to form an opinion or express a thought.


Women were considered inferior beings, with inferior minds, and would therefore need to

be governed by men, who after all, had been created in God's image. It is Ironic to think that

Anne Hutchinson so embraced a faith that made her out to be nothing more than a slave.


Anne kept quiet during most of her days at the colony, but not nearly quiet enough. Feeling the

need to discuss matters of the faith, Anne started a woman's club which would congregate in her

home to discuss the Scriptures, pray and review sermons, but this was also the perfect forum for

Anne to voice her opinions, which generated a fair amount or interest amongst both the men and

women of the community, who would come in greater numbers each week to hear her speak.

Even magistrates and scholars took an interest in what she had to say.


The assertive Anne was now becoming a religious leader to many, and this worried John

Winthrop, a long time opponent of Anne's views, and the newly appointed Governor of the

Massachusetts Bay colony. Winthrop recognized her as a threat to the authority of the men in
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power, and the thought of women expressing their views on Church and communal matters made

him fear for the integrity and fundamentalist ideals of the Puritan way of life in his colony.


Winthrop denounced her gatherings, stating they were "a thing not tolerable nor comely in the

sight of God, nor fitting for your sex." Anne had gained notoriety as the voice of dissent and

the belief that Christians are not bound by moral law. John Winthrop was intent on silencing that

voice of dissent, and was now ready to take the necessary measures to do so.


As far as women were concerned, freedom to think was also the freedom to sin, and

unravel the fabric of the religious community. Another educated woman, poet Anne

Bradstreet, did all she could to keep her thoughts on private pages, while other educated women

probably did not even dare going as far jotting down their thoughts in private journals.


Anne had already formed her personal doctrine based on her interpretations of John

Cotton's teachings; her belief in her own personal closeness with the Almighty could have been

misconstrued as vanity rather than sanctity, but she had known better than to speak publicly of

such matters, at least pending her family's voyage to America. She also believed that all one

needed to be admitted in Heaven was faith, but such a pure and simplified view of the path to

salvation did not leave a lot of room for the Church to govern its God-fearing flock, and was

therefore not acceptable.


When Anne and her family were still living in England, she had hoped that once in

America, she could discuss her faith, and would not need to hide her personal beliefs from other

Puritans; but telling others that God had given her the power of clairvoyance, and that she had

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known in advance of the exact day of their arrival to the colony was a mistake, and this caused

John Cotton to question the inclusion of Anne's family into his congregation.


In order to gain acceptance within Cotton's flock, Anne had to confess to being "guilty of

wrong thinking", even though she did not really believe it. Anne and her family were allowed

into the congregation, but these troubles over her freely expressing her faith made her realize that

the oppressed had now become the oppressors, having already forgotten how they had once been

treated in their native England by both the Catholics and the Protestant Church.


The Puritans interpretation of freedom of religion meant only that they would tolerate the

neighboring colonies and their freedom to worship in any way they saw fit, but John Winthrop

and the rest of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's founders dreamt of a utopia, a holy settlement,

where freedom to worship meant you did not think or do unless you were acting in accordance to

the strictest interpretation of the Bible. The freedom to worship, yes, but not the freedom to

think.

Small women's prayer groups were allowed by law, but large groups listening to the

teachings and opinions of one individual leader were considered to be disorderly, so Winthrop

took legal action against Anne's "subversive" gatherings, and arrested her. Once in custody at the

house of the marshal of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Anne Hutchinson's beliefs were examined by

the court, but John Winthrop, who had been her strongest opponent up to this point had already

made up his mind, and what followed was anything but a fair trial. Winthrop's misogyny,

particularly in the case of Anne Hutchinson was quite apparent from the very first statements he

made in his diary. Anne was referred to as " an American Jezebel, who had gone a-whoring from

                                                       Patruno 7

God", and should be "tried as a heretic."


Anne was accused of heresy and sedition at forty-six years of age and pregnant with her

sixteenth child. She stood in front of forty male judges of the Massachusetts General Court.

Winthrop voiced his outrage at her belief that inner light was the guarantee of salvation, and that

one need be knowledgeable in the Bible of Puritan texts to be worthy of salvation. Anne's

opinions that the law should be interpreted by each person as their own conscience would dictate,

and that Indian slavery and racial prejudice were wrong, also stirred quite a bit of controversy,

not just with Winthrop, but with many other Puritans, who at this point could easily be convinced

of Anne's heresy. Anne was convicted and sentenced to banishment from the community.

Surprisingly, Anne Hutchinson still had followers, and some even decided to join her and

her family on their exile to a small settlement on the island of Aquidneck. A few years later,

following the death of her husband, Anne, her servants and 5 of her children were massacred by

Mahican Indians in September of 1643 in East Chester New York. Eve LaPlante asked her great

aunt Charlotte when she was nine, “Was Anne Hutchinson really scalped?” And her aunt

Charlotte replied “ Of course she was, and all her little children too”. LaPlante says that this was

not entirely true. One little Hutchinson child and the five older ones that were not present

survived the rampage, as my late aunt no doubt knew. Surely she had read Hawthorn’s retelling

of Hutchinson’s impressive story. (238)


While this news horrified some of her friends back in the Massachusetts Bay community,

others viewed it as God's final judgment of her blasphemy; and while Anne's words had opened

the minds of many, her trial had taught them to exercise silence.

                                                       Patruno 8

Anne Hutchinson was such a woman, she managed, in a male dominated , religion

obsessed world to shape the future of New England and New York. It may be difficult for us to

imagine exactly how it must have been like living under Puritan rule in the newly established

American colonies. Anne Hutchinson was a wife, mother, religious leader, and perhaps the first

American feminist.


It is important to note that even though the rulers saw her views as dissent

of the Puritan colony, Anne had never intended to offend anyone. Her views were simply those

of an educated individual with a healthy attitude towards a Church she wished to actively

participate in and help flourish. Anne's creed was simple, perhaps too simple, and this is what

worried the leaders of the colony; after all, how could you control a flock which did not feel they

had to abide by a strict set of rules to gain admittance to heaven?

     
A majestic bronze statue of Anne and one of her children in front of the Massachusetts

State House near that of President’s John F. Kennedy reminds the visitors of modern day

Massachusetts that not all influential people of colonial times were men, Though women had

virtually no power in those days, a few like Anne Hutchinson had a great impact on history.


But all was not lost, as her story serves as a great reminder of the hardships endured by

those who suffered under tyrants, and the hardships endured by women throughout history. It

also serves to remind us of the value of freedom, and how others suffered for the liberty we

sometimes take for granted.











Anne Hutchinson














Valentina Patruno



















American History 2060
Prof.Billera
April 19, 2005

Bibliography


Berkin,Carol, Miller, Christopher, Cherny, Robert, Gormly, James. Making America, A History
of the United States Volume I: To 1877. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003


Clark, Beth. Anne Hutchinson, Religious Leader. Avondale: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.


LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel, The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, The Woman who
     Defied the Puritans. New York: HarperCollins Publisher Inc, 2004.


Mangal, Melina. Let Freedom Ring, Anne Hutchinson, Religious Reformer. Minnesota:
     Capstone Press, 2004.