Anne Hutchinson

NAME Anne Hutchinson (born Anne Marbury). She was often referred to as a "Puritan housewife" or "midwife," though to her enemies, she was a "disturber of the peace." 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Anne Hutchinson was a spiritual leader in colonial Massachusetts who challenged the male-dominated religious and political hierarchy of the Puritan church. She is best known for her role in the Antinomian Controversy, which led to her trial, excommunication, and banishment. Her defiance helped establish the early American principles of freedom of religion and individual conscience.

BIRTH Baptized July 20, 1591, in Alford, Lincolnshire, England. (1), (2)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Anne was born Anne Marbury, the third of fifteen children of Francis Marbury and Bridget Dryden. Her father was an Anglican cleric with strong Puritan leanings who repeatedly clashed with church authorities over his belief that the clergy should be properly educated; he was convicted of heresy and spent two years in Marshalsea Prison before Anne was born. 

Her mother Bridget came from a prominent Northampton family — her brother Erasmus was the grandfather of the poet and playwright John Dryden. (3)

CHILDHOOD Anne spent her first fifteen years in the market town of Alford, Lincolnshire. Her father, who had been imprisoned for his religious dissent, used the transcript of his own public trial as a teaching tool for his children, portraying himself as a hero and the Bishop of London as a buffoon. 

Anne received a far better education than most girls of her era, thanks to her father's strong commitment to learning and his unconventional willingness to teach his daughters. 

In 1605, when Anne was fifteen, the family moved to London, where her father became vicar of St Martin Vintry. (4)

EDUCATION Anne's education was primarily shaped by her father at home, where she was immersed in scripture and Christian doctrine from a young age. Education in Elizabethan England was almost exclusively reserved for boys and men, but Francis Marbury taught his daughters alongside his sons, inspired perhaps by the example of Queen Elizabeth I, who spoke six foreign languages. 

Anne became intimately familiar with the Bible and developed formidable skills in theological argument — skills she would later deploy with devastating effect at her trial. (4)

CAREER RECORD 1634 She emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her family to follow her mentor, the minister John Cotton.

1634–1637 Worked as a skilled midwife and nurse, providing medical and spiritual comfort to women. During this time, she began hosting weekly Bible study meetings in her home.

1637 She was brought to civil trial by Governor John Winthrop and the General Court for "traducing the ministers."

1638 Anne Hutchinson was banished from the colony and subsequently excommunicated after a church trial.

1638–1642 She helped found the settlement of Portsmouth in what is now Rhode Island, alongside Roger Williams

APPEARANCE At the time of her civil trial in November 1637, Anne Hutchinson was 46 years old, of average height and bearing, with an unremarkable face. She dressed in Puritan fashion, in plain, dark-coloured clothing with a white collar and a bonnet called a coif, the standard attire of a respectable colonial woman of her class. No portrait of her survives from life. (5) (6)

Anne Hutchinson on Trial by Edwin Austin Abbey 

FASHION As a devout Puritan, Anne would have adhered strictly to the plain dress codes of her faith — dark, modest garments, white collars, and the coif or cap. Part of her religious message was in fact a direct challenge to outward religious performance: she preached that it was not necessary to "look holy" in order to hold deep religious feelings, openly condemning those who sought salvation through "sombre dress, and other outward forms of religious manifestation." (6) (7)

CHARACTER Governor John Winthrop — her chief adversary — described Anne Hutchinson as "a woman of a ready wit and a bold spirit," possessed of "a very voluble tongue, bolder than a man." More admiringly, sources from Rhode Island describe her as "a capable, energetic, and amiable person" with "a vigorous mind, dauntless courage, and a natural gift for leadership." 

Both friends and enemies agreed that she was extraordinarily self-possessed: her biographer Eve LaPlante wrote that she was "confident of herself and her intellectual tools, largely because of the intimacy she felt with God." (7), (8),

SPEAKING VOICE The historical record attests to its persuasive power. At her trial she spoke with such force and precision that the court, loaded as it was against her, struggled for two days to find a convictable charge. Cotton praised her "sharp apprehension, a ready utterance, and ability to express yourself in the cause of God." (5)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Hutchinson's public persona, as recorded by contemporaries, was one of fierce intellectual and spiritual seriousness. Her acerbic dismissal of the Boston church — "I know no such church, neither will I own it. Call it the whore and strumpet of Boston" — suggests a sharp, combative wit rather than a gentle one.

RELATIONSHIPS Anne married William Hutchinson, a fabric merchant and familiar acquaintance from Alford, at St Mary Woolnoth Church in London on August 9, 1612. The marriage appears to have been one of genuine partnership; William gave up his successful mercantile career to follow his wife into exile, and he signed the Portsmouth Compact as one of the founding twenty-three settlers of the new colony. 

Together they had fifteen children, of whom twelve survived early childhood. 

After William's death in 1642, Anne faced the crises of her final year alone, with several of her children still at home. Her brother-in-law, the minister John Wheelwright, was a close theological ally who was banished from the colony alongside her supporters. (3)

MONEY AND FAME William Hutchinson was a prosperous cloth merchant who "brought a considerable estate with him to New England." The family purchased a half-acre lot in downtown Boston and built one of the largest houses on the Shawmut Peninsula — a two-storey timber-frame structure that stood until it was consumed in the great Boston fire of 1711. 

They were also granted Taylor's Island in Boston Harbour and acquired 600 acres at Mount Wollaston. William became a town selectman and deputy to the General Court, giving the family considerable civic standing. 

Historical highway marker for William and Anne Hutchinson property at Mount Wollaston, By Sarnold17

Anne herself achieved a celebrity — or notoriety — unmatched by any woman in the colony, attracting the young governor to her meetings and terrifying the Puritan establishment. (3)

FOOD AND DRINK  As a colonial housewife and midwife, she would have been skilled in brewing small beer and preparing standard New England fare like cornmeal, peas, and salted meats.

MUSIC AND ARTS Puritan culture was deeply suspicious of what it deemed frivolous entertainment; music in Puritan New England was largely confined to unaccompanied psalm-singing in church. 

LITERATURE Anne Hutchinson left no published writings of her own, though transcripts of her two trials — the civil trial of November 1637 and the church trial of March 1638 — survive and constitute a remarkable record of her arguments and rhetoric. 

Her father Francis Marbury, whose influence on her was enormous, left a written transcript of his own heresy trial — a document he used to educate his children. The colony's leading literary figure, John Winthrop, wrote about her extensively in his journal, calling her "the principal cause of all our trouble." (9)

NATURE Anne Hutchinson's connection to the natural world is most powerfully expressed in her journey into exile: after her excommunication in March 1638, she walked for more than six days through April snow from Boston to Roger Williams' settlement at Providence, then took boats across to Aquidneck Island. 

The Hutchinson family grazed their sheep on Taylor's Island in Boston Harbour and held 600 acres of farmland at Mount Wollaston.

PETS The family's land holdings suggest they kept livestock — sheep are specifically recorded as grazing on their island in Boston Harbour.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Anne Hutchinson's consuming passion outside her domestic duties was theological study and discussion. She devoted her leisure to hosting and leading the conventicles — the sermon-study groups — that would ultimately bring about her downfall.

 Her work as a midwife was both a vocation and a social role that brought her into intimate contact with the women of the colony. (2)

SCIENCE AND MATHS She possessed significant medical knowledge for her time, practicing as a midwife and using herbal remedies to treat the sick

TRIAL AND BANISHMENT Anne Hutchinson arrived in Puritan Massachusetts with the awkward habit of thinking for herself, which in seventeenth-century New England was rather like turning up to a hedgehog convention dressed as a balloon. At first she merely held meetings in her home to discuss sermons — which sounds harmless enough, like a church coffee morning with fewer digestive biscuits and more predestination. But Anne had the unnerving tendency to ask whether many of the colony’s ministers were preaching salvation by grace or salvation by good behaviour in a very expensive hat. This was not considered helpful.

Before long she had done something especially alarming: she had gathered a following. Worse still, she had gathered men who listened to her. In Puritan Boston this was almost certainly listed somewhere between witchcraft and livestock theft. The authorities called it the Antinomian Controversy. One suspects Anne might have called it “a bit of a row.”

By November 1637 the row had matured into a full-scale collision. She was hauled before Governor John Winthrop and the General Court, where the colony’s leading men arranged themselves around her with the united warmth of an Old Testament weather system. And there she was — one woman against magistrates, ministers and enough black hats to block out the sun.

John Winthrop presided over Hutchinson's trial in 1637 as both accuser and judge

For two days she fenced with them brilliantly. They accused her of slandering ministers; she parried. They accused her of unlawful meetings; she wriggled through. She even had the audacity to ask witnesses to swear that their memories were accurate — a deeply inconvenient request in any century. You can almost hear the scratching of quills, the clearing of Puritan throats, and Anne, calm as a woman asking where the marmalade is kept, dismantling accusation after accusation.

It was, for a brief glorious moment, going badly for the prosecution. And then — as human beings often do when winning — she said a little too much. She declared her certainty came by direct revelation from God. Now, among ordinary Christians this might provoke discussion, prayer, perhaps a discreet cough. Among seventeenth-century magistrates, it was rather like tossing a lit candle into the gunpowder shed.

Governor Winthrop pounced. “A woman not fit for our society,” he declared. One can almost imagine Anne raising an eyebrow. History records she demanded to know why she was banished. Winthrop’s reply — “The court knows wherefore” — has all the logical elegance of a parent saying, “Because I said so.” And off she went to prison.

If that had been the end, it would already have been remarkable. But the Puritans, being thorough, decided to try her all over again. In March 1638 she faced a church trial lasting nine hours, which makes modern committee meetings seem mercifully brief. Even her old ally John Cotton abandoned her. The ministers pressed her to recant. She did not.

When minister John Wilson cast her out and “delivered her unto Satan,” one suspects Satan, receiving the paperwork, looked slightly alarmed. Anne walked out unbowed. Better cast out than deny Christ, she said. It is difficult not to love her a little.

Then came exile. Through April snow she and her supporters trudged to the refuge of Roger Williams, and from that expulsion emerged Portsmouth in Rhode Island — a settlement founded, astonishingly, on the idea that people might disagree about God without imprisoning one another. Which, if you think about it, was a fairly revolutionary notion.

Her legacy grew larger than her judges could have imagined. She became a patron saint of troublesome consciences, a foremother of religious liberty, a deeply inconvenient prototype for women who refused to stay quiet. And perhaps most deliciously, centuries later, in 1987, Governor Michael Dukakis formally pardoned her — 349 years after banishment, which must surely rank among history’s more leisurely apologies.

The divine irony is that the men thought they were defending orthodoxy; instead they helped create arguments for freedom of conscience. They thought they were silencing a woman; instead they made her immortal. And Anne herself — formidable, exasperating, inspired Anne — was undone not by her enemies’ cleverness but by her own irrepressible honesty. She could not stop speaking what she believed.

Some people have a spiritual gift for hospitality. Some for teaching. Anne Hutchinson appeared to possess the gift of alarming powerful men. Which, properly understood, may be a ministry.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Anne Hutchinson’s theology was, in essence, gloriously simple and therefore immensely troublesome. She believed salvation was entirely an act of God’s grace — not assisted by good behaviour, not polished up by respectable conduct, and certainly not issued over the counter by anxious clergymen in black hats. This was what she called absolute grace, though to the Massachusetts authorities it probably sounded more like absolute anarchy.

She had learned much of it from her mentor John Cotton, but then — as gifted pupils have an irritating habit of doing — she took the idea further than the teacher found comfortable. Cotton suggested grace could not be earned. Anne practically ran through the streets ringing a bell and announcing that any attempt to prove salvation by upright behaviour might be not just mistaken, but spiritually dangerous. This was not the sort of nuance seventeenth-century Puritans enjoyed over supper.

Her argument, if one dares reduce something so explosive to a sentence, was that only the inward witness of the Spirit — what she called an intuition of the Spirit — could give assurance of election. Not moral performance. Not dutiful piety. Not the sort of face one wore while listening to sermons. 

Her critics called this Antinomianism — literally being “against the law,” which sounds wonderfully sinister, like a theological outlaw galloping across the doctrinal frontier. What they feared was that if believers were under grace rather than law, moral chaos would follow. People might begin doing dreadful things, like disagreeing with ministers.

Anne’s actual point was subtler, though no less inflammatory: the truly redeemed soul was governed by God’s Spirit rather than by anxious rule-keeping. But subtle distinctions are often the first to perish in controversy. Her opponents heard, “The moral law does not bind the saved,” while Anne meant something closer to, “Good works are fruit, not currency.” History is full of arguments collapsing for want of better listening.

At her trial, pressed and cornered, she rose into language so fearless it still crackles. “You have no power over my body,” she told her judges, “neither can you do me any harm — for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my Saviour.” It is one of those sentences that makes modern courage look slightly underdressed. There she stood — surrounded by magistrates, theologians, and men deeply worried about order — calmly informing them they were not, in fact, in charge. One suspects this did not improve the atmosphere.

What fascinates one is how very inconvenient grace often is. We like grace when it forgives us after a bad Tuesday. We grow nervous when it begins ignoring our systems, hierarchies and moral scorecards. Anne seemed to grasp that grace was not merely generous. It was wild.

And perhaps that was her real offence. Not simply that she challenged Puritan orthodoxy, but that she believed God could reach souls without asking institutional permission. That idea has made religious people twitch for centuries. It still does. 

POLITICS Anne Hutchinson operated in a theocratic polity in which religion and civil government were inseparable, and her challenge to ministerial authority was simultaneously a political act. Her supporters, including Governor Henry Vane the Younger, were voted out of office in the May 1637 elections, after which the orthodox party moved swiftly against her. 

After her banishment, her husband William became a founding signatory of the Portsmouth Compact of 1638, one of the early documents of American democratic self-governance.  (2), (3)

SCANDAL The Antinomian Controversy of 1636–1638 was one of the greatest scandals in colonial American history — a theological dispute that shook a young colony's governing structures to their foundations. Anne was condemned to banishment as "a woman not fit for our society." Her miscarriage of a hydatidiform mole in 1638 was gleefully publicised by the Puritan authorities as divine judgment; John Winthrop wrote that "she brought forth not one, but thirty monstrous births or thereabouts," adding that "as she had vented misshapen opinions, so she must bring forth deformed monsters." (3)

MILITARY RECORD  The political fallout from the Antinomian Controversy had direct military consequences: some of her supporters refused to serve in the Pequot War of 1637 because the colony's chaplain for the expedition was the minister John Wilson, whom they regarded as a teacher of the false covenant of works.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS During the winter of her imprisonment (1637–1638), Anne suffered from unusual weakness, throbbing headaches, and bouts of vomiting; historians have debated whether she was pregnant at the time or experiencing acute menopausal symptoms following twenty-five years of continuous pregnancies, deliveries, and nursing. 

In May 1638, following the extreme stress of her trials and her six-day march through snow, she suffered a hydatidiform mole — a failed pregnancy caused by a chromosomal abnormality most common in women over 45.

HOMES Anne spent her first fifteen years in Alford, Lincolnshire, before her family moved to London, where her father became vicar of St Martin Vintry. She and William lived in London after their marriage in 1612, then returned to Alford, before following John Cotton to Boston.

In Boston, the Hutchinsons built one of the largest houses on the Shawmut Peninsula — a two-storey timber-frame structure on a half-acre lot in what is now downtown Boston, which survived until the great fire of 1711. 

After her banishment, she settled in Portsmouth, Aquidneck Island (Rhode Island), and finally, following William's death in 1642, relocated to Pelham Bay on Long Island Sound in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.(2), (3)

TRAVEL Anne made one of the most consequential transatlantic voyages in early American history when she sailed from England to Massachusetts in 1634, aboard the Griffin. 

Her overland journey into exile in April 1638 — more than six days on foot through snow from Boston to Providence, then by boat to Aquidneck Island — was a remarkable feat of endurance for a woman in her late forties recovering from a difficult winter. (3)

DEATH In August 1643, Anne Hutchinson, six of her children, and other members of her household were killed by Siwanoy people during Kieft's War, a conflict between Dutch colonists and local Native American tribes in what is now the Bronx, New York. The only survivor was her nine-year-old daughter Susanna, who was taken captive and lived with the Siwanoy for several years. 

Some in Massachusetts publicly regarded the massacre as divine judgment; others recognised it as the tragic end of one of the most remarkable lives in early American history. 

She is believed to be buried in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. (2), (4)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Anne Hutchinson is the subject of the celebrated painting Anne Hutchinson on Trial by American artist Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911). 

She is depicted in a statue at the Massachusetts State House, erected in her honour, with an inscription calling her "a courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." 

Statue of Anne Hutchinson at Massachusetts State House by Cyrus Edwin Dallin

She has been the subject of numerous biographies, most notably American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson (2004) by Eve LaPlante, a direct descendant. 

A river, a parkway, and multiple schools and streets across New England and New York bear her name.

ACHIEVEMENTS Anne Hutchinson co-founded what is now Portsmouth, Rhode Island, one of the earliest settlements built on a principle of religious tolerance in America. 

Her defiance of Puritan orthodoxy prefigured the principles of freedom of conscience that would later be enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

She is honoured by Massachusetts as "a courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration," and was formally pardoned by Governor Michael Dukakis in 1987. 

Anne Hutchinson remains one of the most important women in early American history — a pioneering advocate for both religious freedom and women's right to speak, teach, and lead.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – Anne Hutchinson (2) National Women's History Museum (3) Britannica – Anne Hutchinson  (4) American History Central (5) Beliefnet – The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (6) Core Knowledge – Anne Hutchinson Biography (7) Old Stone Bank History of Rhode Island (8) Women of the Hall (9) Wikisource – New England Legends and Folk Lore (1910)