The trial of Anne Hutchinson

Part 3 of my series on Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson focuses on her fall. After Hutchinson’s brother-in-law Wheelwright’s outburst at the Boston church in January 1637, in which he said all those under the covenant of works were the “great enemies of Christ” and ought to be “killed with the word of God,” Wheelwright was found guilty of sedition (May 1637). Hutchinson’s followers rallied to Wheelwright’s cause, signing a petition in his favor.

But Wheelwright’s and Hutchinson’s most powerful friend, Governor Henry Vane, was voted out of that office that same month, May 1637. John Winthrop, foe of all Hutchinson stood for, was voted back in.

But it may not have been Winthrop’s return that started Hutchinson’s fall. During the summer of 1637, New England was embroiled in the Pequot War. Colonists were on edge, wondering if God had caused the war to happen, in order to punish them for the heresy in Boston. As the war wrapped up in late summer (more on the Pequot War in another post), the clergy of Massachusetts met in Cambridge in August to list and reaffirm their opposition to the errors of antinomians. They then set trial dates for the leaders of the antinomians in New England, Wheelwright and Hutchinson.

On November 2, Wheelwright was tried and banished. Over two days, November 2-3, Hutchinson was tried. She was a very intelligent person who handled her defense well, and who had covered her tracks sufficiently that she was not even being tried for leading an antinomian rebellion, but merely for two minor charges (holding meetings in her home in a way unbecoming to a woman, and encouraging Wheelwright and “his” followers) and one more solemn charge (slandering the ministers of the colony).

When John Cotton was brought forward to lower the boom on Hutchinson, his old friend and longtime follower, he refused. Cotton declared that he had never heard Hutchinson say that the ministers were under a covenant of works. Now Hutchinson could not be charged with slandering the ministers. She was about to be let off with a warning. And then she made a critical misstep.

She compared herself to Abraham, to whom God had spoken directly. She claimed that if the General Court of Massachusetts punished her, God would destroy the colony, and when asked how she knew this, she claimed God told her directly.

This was open heresy, and easily merited banishment. Why Hutchinson sabotaged herself at the moment of freedom and triumph we’ll never really know. Perhaps she was tired from the strain of the trial. Maybe she was arrogant. Maybe she just couldn’t help saying what she believed. In any case, she was banished.

Her followers in Boston tried to save her, saying that she must have been tricked by the judges into making a statement she didn’t really believe. But when they met with her, Hutchinson reaffirmed her heresy, and made even bolder statements than before. Reluctantly, her church let her go.

Winthrop stayed the sentence of banishment that November because Hutchinson was pregnant. She did not leave Boston until March. Hutchinson went to Rhode Island, where she managed to alienate even Roger Williams, and then to Long Island, where she died in an attack by Native Americans in 1643.

The judges in Hutchinson’s trial were tough, and they were hard on her. No quarter was given her for being a woman. They treated her as they would any heretic. But I think it’s hard to say she was treated unfairly. Her heresy was open, and she knew it carried dramatic consequences. It was her own words at her trial that ultimately sealed her fate.

Hutchinson was given opportunities to recant her beliefs; since she could not do so without lying, she didn’t. This showed integrity, and in that sense she is admirable. But the beliefs she clung to were so mean-spirited and exclusionary that it is difficult to respect her.

Hutchinson has gone down in history as a demure maiden with downcast eyes facing mean, angry old Puritan men in black coats. Even the most adoring of Winthrop biographers (and one who is a reliable historian), Edmund Morgan, castigates Winthrop for “persecuting” a brave and wonderful woman, and calls the whole episode “the least attractive” of Winthrop’s life.

But I find little to admire in a woman who wanted to damn the world, and sow dissension and mistrust amongst her fellows. The fact that she was a woman should not sway the rational historian. If it had been only Wheelwright, I doubt the whole incident of antinomian dispute in 1636-37 would be known outside the circle of Puritan historians.