William Hutchinson (Rhode Island) - Trouble in Boston

Trouble in Boston

Hutchinson's wife was described by historian Thomas W. Bicknell as "a pure and excellent woman, to whose person and conduct there attaches no stain." She was helpful to the sick and needy, and gifted in argument and ready speech, but she saw theological doctrines a little differently than the Puritan elders. In late 1636 Governor John Winthrop gave the first warning of an issue that would consume his attention, and that of other Boston leaders, for the next two years. He wrote that Mrs. Hutchinson, "a woman of ready wit and bold spirit," had brought with her two dangerous theological errors, elaborating upon them in his journal. She was holding private meetings at her home, drawing many people from Boston as well as other towns, including many prominent citizens, and entreating them to a religious view that was antithetical to the rigid orthodoxy of the Puritan church. As the situation worsened, Mrs. Hutchinson was put on trial in November 1637, convicted, and banished from the colony along with some of her followers. To put the expulsion into perspective, Bicknell wrote in his 20th century history of Rhode Island:

The real gist of the matter as between the Puritans of the Bay and the men and women whom they persecuted and banished was this, that the former came to the New World to establish a State Church while the latter came for the sake of freer thought in civil and religious concerns. The Boston Puritan had no use for a Baptist, a Quaker, A Churchman, a Roman Catholic, or in fact for any who differed in doctrine from them. Error in religion as they interpreted it was treason to the State. It threatened the solidarity of Puritanism, which as Cotton Mather interpreted it was Puritans only in a Puritan Commonwealth.

— Thomas W. Bicknell, historian

The court order banishing her reads: "Mrs. Anne Hutchinson (the wife of William Hutchinson) being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, shee declared volentarily her revelations for her ground, & that shee should bee delivered & the Court ruined, with their posterity & thereupon was banished, & the meanwhile was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her." On 12 March 1638 it was ordered that she must be gone by the end of the month.