The Life of Anne Hutchinson

          

                        The Story of My Life

                 

                I was born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England in July 1591. I was the daughter of Bridget Dryden and Francis Marbury, a deacon at Christ Church, Cambridge. I was raised under my father's belief of the inadequacy he saw in the clergy of the Church of England. I recall the year when he had been arrested and jailed for his criticisms of the Anglican Church. When my father returned home, he fervently pursued a satisfactory education for me. I was home schooled and was allowed access to my father's vast library, though mt family all followed preacher John Sermons, whose idea were labeled under the growing religion of Puritanism.

                In 1634, my husband Will Hutchinson and I followed John Cotton to New England, bringing along our 15 children. I had high hopes for the Americas, praying that it would be a safe haven for those who truly believed and supported Puritanism. Though as time passed, I began to realize that life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was not as liberating as I had hoped it would be. As an educated English women, I found it difficult to believe that I was not allowed to voice my opinion in what I saw fit for the colonies. I had already begun to create my own doctrine of what I felt Puritanism was truly supposed to be about.I believed that all one needed to be admitted in Heaven was faith, but this simplified view of the path to salvation did not leave a lot of room for the Church to govern its God-fearing congregation, and was therefore rejected.

  

                To my congregation, tolerance meant allowing neighboring colonies to worship as they pleased as long as their beliefs did not interfere with the Puritan way of life. In my community, freedom meant the freedom to worship what was expected, but not the right to defy these conventions. I had confessed in front of my congregation that I had possessed "wicked thoughts", but did not truly feel that way. How was worshipping God as I wished wicked? I was angered at the way many men would treat their wives or their daughters, as if they were inferior!I  started a woman's club which would meet in my home to discuss the bible, pray and analyze, sermons, but I took the opportunity to voice my opinion. Apparently, I was able to draw larger crowds, and my ideas began to spread amongst the colony.

               The "saintly" John Winthrop was opposed to my ideals, and we had been cross with each other for quite some time, he denounced my beliefs as being intolerable and irrelevant. I was eventually arrested and charged for antinomianism, which is the theological doctrine that by faith and God's grace a Christian is freed from all laws. John Winthrop's obvious dislike of me eventually led him to make up his mind, and my trial was far from being fair. I was banished from the colony and sent to a small settlement on the island of Aquidneck. What touched my heart the most was the fact that some men and women were so devoted to my ideas that they followed me in exile as well. 

Publisher's Note:  (Anne and five of her children were killed by Mahican Indians in her small community before she could finish her autobiography)

  

Link to Ms. Hutchinson's trial:  http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch02_03.htm

Excerpt: "The Examination of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson . . . ," transcript of trial, 1637.

"The court hath already declared themselves satisfied concerning the things you [Mrs. Ann Hutchinson] hear, and concerning the troublesomness of her spirit, and the danger of her course amongst us, which is not to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of the court that Mrs. Hutchinson for these things that appear before us is unfit for our society, and if it be the mind of the court that she shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned till she be sent away. . . . Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away."