The Ely miner., 1930-05-09
Bo Stor

considers her parentage. She was the
daughter of Francis Marbury, min
lister of Northampton, England, who
had braved the wrath of his bishop
for the sake Of his belief in "the
reformation Of our church in Discipline
and Ceremonies" had been branded
IAN overthwart, proud, Puritan knave"
by that dignitary and had twice been
put in Jail. Her mother was a Dry
den, a relative of the poet, Dryden,
who in his later years, though, became
his family.
Considering the turbulence of her
last few years, the first 46 years of
Anne Hutchinsons life were strange
ly quiet ones. Her childhood was
spent in Afford and London in heavy
religious atmosphere that never lifted.
In 1912, at the age Of twenty-one, she
was married to William Hutchinson,
a good-hearted mercer, who from the
beginning was dominated by his
strong-minded wife. During the first
% years of their married life she
bore him ii children and during those
years the energy which later was to
be spent mainly in religious contro-
versy was fully occupied with house
hold cares and the upbringing of her
family. But during that time she
travelled repeatedly to the neighboring
town of old Boston to hear Rev. John
Cotton preach in st. Botolph's church.
Cotton became a sort of an ideal
of hers and when he was forced to
leave England because Of his nom
conformist views and emigrate to
America, Anne decided to follow.
What William Hutchinson thought of
this uprooting of his home and family
it not recorded, but he had probably
long since learned not to oppose his
wife's decisions. So in 1854 to the
new Boston in Massachusetts Bay
colony, raw little town of less than
a thousand inhabitants living in rude
one-room log cabins and fragile frame
houses. on the edge of the wilderness,
came the Hutchinsons. Within a few
months Anne became the social lead
er and Lady Bountiful' of the settle
ment. She was constant companion
of John Cotton, who basked in her
admiration for him; she became a
close friend of the governor. Sir
Henry Vane, the younger, and she be-
came a recognized leader in the re-
ligiOus discussions which occupied so
much Of the colony's attention. In
fact it was these discussions which
brought about her downfall.
The heart Of the Puritan religion
was belief that Gods Word was in
the Scriptures. The cardinal sin
against such religion was the belief
that Gods inspiration could be trans
mitted directly to human beings. So
when there arose in the colony a fac
ton, called "Antinomians" (people not
living by the letter of the law of God,
and believing that God revealed his
laws directly to them), when this fac
ton grew under the leadership of
Anne Hutchinson, when meetings were
held in her home to discuss and crit
icize the sermons of the Puritan min
listers and when they asserted that
IUOSC Oh the DOStOH ululStcIS were uH-
der a covenant of works" and were
trying to be saved by religious OBJ
servances, it was only a matter of
time until Anne should find herself in
trouble
The climax came In 1887. Winthrop
and the other Puritan leaders had fled
from England to escape religious in
tolerance, but, as so often happens,
those who suffer from intolerance are
the first to become intolerant. So
they put Anne on trial for heresy, a
trial that has been compared to that
of Joan of Arc at Rouen. Under the
cross-questiOning and testimony
brought against her, she proved her.
Self more than a match for her prose
cutors. But just at the moment when
it seemed that she had defeated her
accusers. she burst forth into long
speech describing Gods revelations to
her. So she convicted herself. She
was banished from the colony and
went to Rhode Island to make her
home.
Left widow in 1912, she set forth