William Hutchinson (Rhode Island)

William Hutchinson (Rhode Island)

William Hutchinson (1586–1641) was a judge (chief magistrate) of the Colony of Portsmouth on the island of Aquidneck, also known as Rhode Island (and later a part of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations). Sailing from England to New England with his large family in 1634, he became a merchant in Boston and served as both Deputy to the General Court and selectman. In Boston, his wife, the famed Anne Hutchinson, became embroiled in a theological controversy with the Puritan leaders of the colony, resulting in her banishment in 1638. Hutchinson and 18 others departed with her to form the new settlement of Pocasset on the Narragansett Bay, renamed Portsmouth, one of the original towns in the Rhode Island colony.

In Portsmouth, Hutchinson became treasurer, then, in 1639 when controversy compelled the judge (governor) of the town, William Coddington to relocate and found the town of Newport, Hutchinson became the chief magistrate of Portsmouth, which lasted for less than a year. Hutchinson died shortly after June 1641, after which his widow and many of her younger children moved to New Netherland (later in the Bronx in New York City). Mrs. Hutchinson and all but one of her children perished in a massacre which sprang from tensions between the Dutch and the Indians. William Hutchinson was described by Governor John Winthrop as being mild tempered, somewhat weak, and living within the shadow of his prominent and outspoken wife.