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Anne Hutchinson has long been seen as a strong religious dissenter who paved
the way for religious freedom in the strictly Puritan environment of New
England. Another interpretation of the controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson
asserts that she was simply a loving wife and mother whose charisma and personal
ideas were misconstrued to be a radical religious movement. Since this alleged
religious movement was led by a woman, it was quickly dealt with by the Puritan
fathers as a real threat. Whatever her motives, she was clearly a great leader
in the cause of religious toleration in America and the advancement of women in
society. Although Anne Hutchinson is historically documented to have been
banished as a religious dissenter, the real motive for her persecution was that
she challenged the traditional subordinate role of women in Puritan society by
expressing her own religious convictions.
Anne Hutchinson was born Anne
Marbury in Alford, England, in 1591. Anne's father was a deacon at Christ
Church, Cambridge. Francis Marbury spoke out earnestly about his convictions
that many of the ordained ministers in the Church of England were unfit to guide
people's souls. For this act of defiance, he was put in jail for one year.
Undaunted, Francis Marbury continued to voice his radical opinions, including
that many ministers were appointed haphazardly by high church officials to
preach in any manner they wanted. Eventually, Anne's father did restrain his
verbal attacks on the Church of England, choosing conformity with an imperfect
church over constant arrests and inquisitions. (D. Crawford, Four Women in a
Violent Time, pps. 11-15.) Being educated at home, Anne read many of her
father's books on theology and religion. Much of Anne's later independence and
willingness to speak out was due to her father's example. Anne admired her
father for his defiance of traditional church principles. She was always
fascinated with theological questions such as the fate of the Indians who had no
knowledge of Jesus Christ or salvation. Her childhood was a definite factor in
the development of the strong, self-assured woman she grew up to be.
Anne
Hutchinson lived in Alford, England as a housewife and mother after she was
married at the age of twenty-one to a man named Will Hutchinson. Anne was drawn
to a certain minister named John Cotton who preached fiery sermons that were
originally Protestant in nature, but gradually became more akin to Puritan
doctrines in that he preached purification of the church and focused on the
corruption of the current establishment. Puritans were a form of Protestants in
the sense that they rebelled against the Catholic Church, but they also believed
the current system still needed more change. Cotton's two main beliefs were the
destructiveness of continuing Catholic influence in the Church of England, and
the opportunities for success and religious freedom in America. (D. Crawford, p.
26.) The Hutchinson family, which eventually consisted of 15 children, took the
long drive from Alford to Boston (England) often on Sundays to hear Reverend
Cotton preach. After 20 years of village life in Alford, the Hutchinsons decided
to follow their minister to New England in 1634. One main reason for this move
was because Anne wanted to feel free to express her increasingly Puritan views
under the leadership of John Cotton. (M.J. Lewis, Portraits of American Women,
p. 35.) Unfortunately, Massachusetts turned out to be more religiously
constrictive than England for Anne, even as a member of the Puritan church.
At the time of Anne's youth in England, the official religion was
Protestantism under the Church of England. Puritanism developed in the late
Sixteenth Century from the split in Protestantism between those who were
satisfied with traditional methods and those who thought the way of worship
needed purification. This second group, the Puritans, thought that worship
needed to be simpler with fewer sacraments and rites. The battle lines were
drawn, and the Puritan Revolution in England began. In the twelve years before
1642, 21,000 Puritans moved to New England (B. Bailyn, The Peopling of British
North America, pps. 25-26.) for the purpose of establishing a haven for them to
practice Puritanism together. Anne Hutchinson lived in this violent and changing
time when the established religion was often questioned, and groups of people
came to their own conclusions on points of doctrine. For the first time, people
like Anne learned to think for themselves instead of blindly believing what was
taught to them by the clergy.
Anne was drawn by the excitement of this
religious struggle and based her opinions on the study of the Bible. (D.
Crawford, p. 18.) Her religious beliefs were mainly derived from John Cotton's
preaching which she embellished to produce her own doctrine. Essentially, Anne
concluded that faith alone was adequate for salvation. This view weakened the
church as an instrument of discipline and minimized the clergy's role in the
process. (O. and L. Handlin, Liberty and Power, p. 125.) She once referred to
the Puritan clergy saying, "A company of legall [sic] professors lie poring on
the law which Christ hath established." (As quoted in B. Adams, The Emancipation
of Massachusetts, p. 219.) She was confident in her communication with God,
saying, "I feel that nothing important ever happens that is not revealed to me
beforehand." (D. Crawford, pps. 32-33.) These ideas of Anne's, as well as the
extended list of the principles of Anne Hutchinson found in the Appendix, (not
included in this hypertext version) were not loudly proclaimed by her to the
community at large. She expressed them in the privacy of her own home or after
she was excommunicated from the Puritan church. She was never in open defiance
of the Puritan principles and wished to remain a member of the church until her
trial. Although in some areas, she did disagree with Puritan doctrine, she was
still a devoted member of the church and agreed with the majority of the Puritan
principles. Her purpose in expressing her opinions was not to break down the
church but rather to make positive change in those areas where the church was in
error in her opinion.
Anne's unorthodox views did not begin to surface
visibly until the voyage to America. Anne met with a group of women to discuss
religion and she taught them that every person could ask and receive an answer
from God if they would listen. She became a radical in the eyes of those around
her, claiming knowledge of the day of their arrival. Amazingly, she predicted
that they would land on September eighteenth and that was the exact date that
they arrived. (D. Crawford, p. 43.) This is just one example of several of the
things that Anne predicted would happen. Anne was obviously a devout and
unselfish woman for the simple reason that she did not take advantage of the
accident or power that allowed her to predict the future. She never entertained
ambitions of power; she was simply content in her role as a wife and mother.
Upon her arrival with her family, Anne was not welcomed as warmly by John
Cotton as in the past because of her increasingly unorthodox views. Reverend
Cotton advised Anne, "Here it be tactful to hold one's tongue." (D. Crawford, p.
87.) Due to her assertions that God had revealed to her the day of their
arrival, Anne was forced to say, "I have been guilty of wrong thinking" to be
accepted in to the Puritan church there. Anne justified doing this in her own
mind by referring privately to mistakes in small domestic decisions, not her
religious convictions. (D. Crawford, p. 90.) She was willing to compromise in
this so she could be a member of the Puritan church. Much of this desire was due
to her admiration of John Cotton and her wish to again be part of his
congregation.
Anne Hutchinson had originally had high expectations for
finally having the freedom to express her beliefs, away from the confines of the
established church in England. However, there was no religious freedom at all in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony except to agree with the doctrines set forth by the
Puritan church there. This denial of freedom of religion to others by the
Puritans was ironic in light of the fact that dissenters were merely declining
to conform to the Puritans, as the Puritans had declined to conform to the
Church of England. (C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, p. 478.)
However, at this point the Puritans were so popular that they didn't need to
relax any of the principles in order to draw in new members to the church. This
did change later in the Seventeenth Century, when the original foundation of
Puritanism was worn away by church leaders hoping to attract newcomers to their
congregation by decreasing the harshness of Puritan law.
Puritanism was
never very unified or defined in principle. Dissenters and radicals from the
Church of England were essentially just other groups of Puritans. After the
religious fervor of the first couple of generations died down, Puritanism became
routine, a "problematic anachronism." (B. Bailyn, p. 91.) Bernard Bailyn is
implying in his wording that the Puritan cause soon became dated and unwieldy,
representing the views born of the religious and political situation in England
several decades previously. Puritanism soon lost its original purpose, which was
to purify and make holy the Church of England. It became another oppressive,
structured form of Christianity that kept its followers from drawing conclusions
of their own about issues such as predestination or visible saints. John Cotton
graphically illustrates this oppression in his evaluation of the situation:
"Here members of the Church have suffered whippings for having a whim of their
own." (As quoted in D. Crawford, p. 88.) It clearly took a woman of great
courage like Anne Hutchinson to stand up for her principles amidst controversy
and threats.
It must be said, however, that the Puritans believed they had a
covenant with God to establish a holy colony, an example for others. They didn't
care if Quakers, Catholics, or Jews settled nearby in Rhode Island but desired
to establish Massachusetts Bay Colony for the specific purpose of creating a
community of devout Puritans. John Winthrop wanted to build "a Citty [sic] upon
a Hill," a place where the Puritan religion would be exclusively followed with
utmost devotion. (As quoted in C. Bridenbaugh, Early Americans, p. 87.)
Obviously, this was not a colony with a high tolerance level for dissension from
the established guidelines of the faith. Their view of liberty was freely
choosing the Puritan religion and then following through on the commitments that
came with that. Anne Hutchinson was a convert to Puritanism who had too much of
a mind of her own to be tolerated by the Puritan fathers, even though she had no
wish to leave the church. In this light, it really is her fault that she was
banished from Massachusetts Bay because she knew her beliefs did not always
coincide with those of the Puritans. She was aware of the way women were treated
and had to be prepared for the inevitable.
Women were completely repressed
and disregarded for intellectual value by the Puritan church in Massachusetts.
The accepted belief was that intelligence and understanding was given to men,
not women, so her chief duty as a wife was to her husband and children. (C.M.
Andrews, p. 477.) Women were considered morally weak because Eve was the first
to sin in the Garden of Eden. (J. Demos, A Little Commonwealth, p. 84-85.)
According to the dicta of the day, a woman was supposed to derive her "ideas of
God from the contemplation of her husband's excellencies." (C. M. Andrews, p.
477.) Women were not allowed to speak in church, judged openly as inferior
creatures. Even though this sounds tyrannical in our day and age, American women
actually had more rights than did women in England. Though the basic perception
of women as inferior was common to both America and England, in America, a woman
could own property if her husband died and she could sometimes own her own
property. (J. Demos, p. 85.) However, these issues were mere technicalities that
hardly improved the forced submission of women to men that is a common trend
evident throughout the written history of the world.
This famous quotation
from the journal of John Winthrop is often used to encapsulate the male attitude
toward women in early America. A young woman had lost "her understanding and
reason" because she had given "herself wholly to reading and writing, and
written many books." If she had kept her place, Winthrop said,
if she had
attended to household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone
out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose
minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them
usefully and honorably in the place God had set her." (D.F. Hawke, Everyday Life
in Early America, pps. 62-63.)
In light of this mindset, it is hardly
surprising that Anne's ideas and intelligence were met with hostility and
rejection.
Anne actually lived a relatively submissive life in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. She never publicly gave her own opinions on religious
issues, but only in the privacy of a home among other women. She started another
women's club in her home to discuss the sermon and the Bible each week. The
attendance at these meetings increased with the controversy over the banishment
of Roger Williams. The women were attracted to Anne and wanted to hear her
opinions. This was often the lone intellectual stimulation they received in
their restricted lives. John Winthrop, one of Anne's chief opposers, reported a
resolution passed by the assembly in 1637 as saying,
That though women might
meet (some few together) to pray and edify one another; yet such an assembly,
(as was then the practice in Boston), where sixty or more did meet every week,
and one woman (in a prophetical way, by resolving questions of doctrine, and
expounding the scripture) took upon her the whole exercise, was agreed to be
disorderly, and without rule." (As quoted in C. Holliday, Woman's Life in
Colonial Days, p. 40.)
This was the legal action that the Massachusetts Bay
colony first took against her. She was arrested and brought to trial because her
meetings were said to be disorderly.
The Puritans denounced Anne's beliefs
as heresy and sedition, justifying her subsequent excommunication and
banishment. John Winthrop summed it up in this way: "The two capital errors with
which she was charged were these: That the Holy Ghost dwells personally in a
justified person; and that nothing of sanctification can help to evidence to
believers their justification." (As quoted in C. Holliday, p. 44.) Fiske, an
American historian, justified the Puritans' harsh treatment of Anne Hutchinson
and her followers as a necessary move to protect the unity of the colony:
When the Pequots threatened Massachusetts colony a few men in Boston refused
to serve. These were the Antinomians, followers of Anne Hutchinson, who
suspected their chaplain of being under a " Covenant of works," whereas their
doctrine was one should live under a "Covenant of grace." This is one of the
great reasons why they were banished. It was the very life of the colony that
they should have conformity... Therefore this religious doctrine was working
rebellion and sedition, and endangering the very existence of the state. (As
quoted in C. Holliday, pps. 44-45.)
Alone, Anne was not a threat to the
Puritan establishment in Massachusetts Bay. However, as a woman leading a
growing number of men as well as women, she was a threat to their authority and
had to be stopped. Fiske's assertion that the Antinomians who protested killing
the Indians would affect the outcome of the war is probably exaggerated since
all of her followers numbered less than two hundred out of about three thousand.
(E. Battis, Saints and Sectaries, p. 293.)
Eventually, Anne was brought to
trial for her continued actions by the Puritans. Samuel Eliot Morrison sums up
the series of events that followed in this way:
It was on a small scale a
state trial of the sort then common in England, where no legal safeguards were
observed...the result was foregone conclusion. Yet the clever and witty woman
conducted her case admirably... Anne's unruly member gave her away. She
declared, even boasted, of her personal revelations from the Almighty; and that
was to confess the worst. For in this the Puritan agreed with historical
Christianity, that divine revelation closed with the book of Revelation.
Convicted out of her own mouth, Anne Hutchinson was sentenced to banishment from
Massachusetts Bay "as being a woman not fit for our society." (As quoted in E.D.
Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, p. 136.)
John Winthrop,
who was at that time the deputy governor, wanted Anne Hutchinson banished even
before she was found guilty of anything. Her trial was by no means fair or just.
She defended herself very well with her knowledge of scripture to support her
positions. She might have been let off with a reprimand except that she blurted
out that God had said he would save her from them. Even if she hadn't been
banished at that trial, it is most likely she would have continued in her
teachings, unsilenced by Puritan threats and been banished at a later trial.
John Winthrop was the driving force behind Anne's banishment. He had very strong
feelings about the place of women and he had enough power to do something about
it when Anne violated them.
William Coddington, a secret Quaker at the time,
expressed his hope that "this trial will help break through the crust of
formalism hardening over religion, and allow the springs of natural piety to
well to the surface and refresh the arid theology of these times." (As quoted in
D. Crawford, p. 112.) His wish was far from coming true in the rigid environment
of New England. The Puritan religion was growing more and more stiff, forcing
people to break out if they wanted any mind of their own. This same
inflexibility that started with those such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson
ultimately led to the downfall and loss of respect for the Puritan church. It
may have been permitted for a preacher such as Anne's own John Cotton to be
slightly more liberal in his doctrine, but it was an affront to the proper place
of women in society coming from a housewife such as Anne Hutchinson.
One of
the strongest indications of the conviction's biased nature is an entry in John
Winthrop's diary referring to her as a woman whose willful ways had made her "go
a-whoring from God. She is an American Jezebel. She shall be tried as a
heretic." (As quoted in D. Crawford, p. 108.) Winthrop carried a violent hatred
for this woman who challenged his and all male supremacy. Soon after her
banishment, Anne Hutchinson and all but one of her family were killed in an
Indian massacre in Hell Gate, Rhode Island. The Puritan leaders felt no remorse
over their role in the deaths of those in the Hutchinson family. On the
contrary, they were pleased that God had exposed the sinner. John Winthrop
exulted callously, "God's hand is apparently seen herein, to pick out this woful
[sic] woman, to make her...an unheard-of heavy example...Appropriate that the
massacre took place at this `Hell Gate.' Proud Jezebel has at last been cast
down." (As quoted in D. Crawford, p. 137.) John Winthrop is again comparing Anne
to Jezebel, a character from the Old Testament who killed the Lord's prophets,
promoted Baal worship, and was eaten by the dogs after her death for her
wickedness. (1 Kings 18:4, 1 Kings 16:32-33, 2 Kings 9:30-37.) This hardly seems
a fair comparison to a loving woman who spent her life serving others, and
trying to show others the way she thought was right in the eyes of the Lord.
Anne was known in the colony as a cheerful neighbor, one who assisted at
birthings, cared for the sick, even the Indians. (D. Crawford, p. 91.) Though
she was vigorous and outspoken, she won over most of those she came into contact
with through her sound doctrine. (B. Chapin, Early America, pps. 40-41.) This is
another instance of the men blaming all women for original sin and therefore
concluding that all women are evil.
Anne Hutchinson's fate gave awareness to
the need of New Englanders to break away from the chains put on them in the name
of religion. Many people accused Winthrop of cruelty and guilt for her
misfortunes. In addition, Captain John Underhill retaliated to the massacre with
a massacre of his own on the local Indian population, killing 250 Indian men,
women, and children, starting the Three-Year War. (D. Crawford, p. 137.) This
incident was a catalyst to the ensuing struggle of New Englanders to break away
from the confines of Puritanism. Due to Anne's huge advancement of religious
liberty, it is often overlooked that she was principally persecuted at the time
for being a woman with differing views. In some ways it is fortunate that she
was treated so harshly by the Puritans. It made the Puritan tyranny in
Massachusetts undeniable to many who had simply been living in compliance with
the established codes, never questioning or investigating them. It was one
factor in the many following movements for freedom of speech, contributing to
the separation of church and state of today.
C. Holliday analyzes Anne
Hutchinson's impact on American history in this way:
Anne Hutchinson's
efforts, according to some viewpoints, may have been a failure, but they
revealed in unmistakable manner the emotional starvation of Puritan womanhood.
Women, saddened by their hardships, depressed by their religion, denied an open
love for beauty...flocked with eagerness to hear this feminine radical...a very
little listening seems to have convinced them that this woman understood the
female heart far better than did John Cotton of any other male pastor of the
settlements. (C. Holliday, pps. 45-46.)
This theory contends that the reason
Anne Hutchinson was such a threat was that she was uniting an increasing number
of women to learn more about themselves and make religion meaningful in their
lives. A God of love and mercy was much more appealing to them than one who
condemns all sinners but the chosen few. She understood
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