Mistress Anne Hutchinson

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

1634. THE biographies of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson have, so to speak, been written by her enemies. Modern authors, in writing of her, have rehearsed her story from the point of view of the seventeenth century, and we live in the nineteenth. But History accepts no verdict that is not founded in impartial justice, and impartial justice was the one thing that Anne Hutchinson could expect neither from her accusers nor her judges. All the errors imputed to her — and they were sufhciently venial of themselves — mere quibbles, in fact — might and should, we think, have been settled within the church of which she was a member; but the voice of the community in which she lived, which knew and respected her most for her Christian virtues and her shining talents, was silenced in the general outcry raised from without, "Crucify her, crucify her!" and, weakly yielding to it, the civil arm struck her down as relentlessly ^s it would have done the worst LAMP. 12 NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. of criminals or the most dangerous enemy to public order. Mrs. Hutchinson was driven with ignominy from her home into exile, for maintaining in her own house that a mere profession of faith could not evidence salvation unless the Spirit hrst revealed itself from within. Her appeal is to be heard. It is too late to blot out the record, but there is yet time to. reverse the attainder. We begin our sketch with a simple introduction. Anne Marbury was a daughter of Francis Marbury, who was first a minister in Lincolnshire, and afterwards in London. This fact should be borne in mind when following her after career. She was the daughter of a scholar and a theologian. iSTaturally, therefore, much of her unmarried as well as her married life had been passed in the society of ministers, whom she learned to esteem more for what they knew than for what they preached. The same fact, too, her intellectual gifts being considered, reason- ably accounts for her pondering deeply the truths of Christian- ity and her fondness for theological discussion both for its own sake and as involving the great problem of her own life. It Avas the atmosphere in which she had lived and moved and had her being. It aroused and quickened her intellectual faculties and perceptions. She lived, too, in a time of great religious excitement, soon to become one of active warfare, the period of the great Puritan revolt, so that it is easily seen how that movement, which had enlisted some of the noblest women in England, should absorb such ai4one as Anne, who was intel- lectually an enthusiast and morally an agitator, who had been accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of adulation, and who was ambitious, capable, and adroit. While still young, she mar- ried William Hutchinson, a country gentleman of good character and estate, also of Lincolnshire. "We know very little of him, and that little comes from Winthrop, the bitter enemy and per- secutor of his wife, who indeed speaks of the husband in terms approaching contempt. But this is also an unconscious tribute to the superior talents of Anne. Were it all true, we simply discover once more the mutual yet unaccountable sympathy existing between a strong woman and a weak man which it is the custom of the world to satirize or to sneer at. There is, however, little doubt that the attachment of one for the other was mutually lasting and sincere, in spite of the sore trials to which their married life Avas exposed. But allowing that he was eclipsed by the superior brilliancy of his wife, there is quite enough evidence to prove that William Hutchinson was a man of sterling character and worth. He played a secondary, but no ignoble, part in the events we have to narrate. It happened that the Hutchinsons were parishioners of the Rev. John Cotton when that celebrated divine was minister of the Church of Boston, in Lincolnshire. For liim and his abili- ties Mrs. Hutchinson had the highest respect and esteem. And when Cotton fled to New England, as he like so many others was at length compelled to do, in order to escape from the tyranny of the bishops, the Hutchinsons also resolved to emi- grate thither, and presently the whole family did so. It is proper to be mentioned here that Mrs. Hutchinson's daughter had married the Eev. John Wheelwright, another minister of Lincolnshire, who was also deprived for nonconformity, and who also came to New England in consequence of the perse- cutions of Archbishop Laud. The long interval that elapsed between the date of her mar- riage and that of her removal to America is very imperfectly filled out in the notices we have of Mrs. Hutchinson's life. We are not made acquainted with any of those formative processes by which she became so well equipped for the mental and spirit- ual conflict that she was soon to enter upon with an adversary who could neither learn nor forget. A family had now grown np around her. Besides the daughter, the Mrs. Wheelwright already mentioned, there were three sons ; so that it was no young, sentimental, or unbalanced novice, but a middle-aged, matured, and experienced woman of the world who embarked in the autumn of 1634 for New England, looking eagerly there to obtain and enjoy liberty of conscience among those who might be supposed, if any people on the earth could, to know its value. 14 NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. During the voyage she entered into discussions with some Puritan ministers who were also going out to New England, upon such abstruse points as Avhat were the evidences of justi- fication, and she broadly hinted that when they should arrive at their destination they might expect to hear more from her. From these things, trivial in themselves, it is clear that Mrs. Hutchinson considered herself to have a mission to deliver to- the people and churches of New England. She avowed her entire belief in direct revelations made to the elect, moreover declaring that never had anything of importance happened to her which had not been revealed to her beforehand. The vessel…

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)