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Anne Hutchinson |
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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