Hutchinson, Anne

orig. Anne Marbury

(baptized July 20, 1591, Alford, Lincolnshire, Eng.

died August or September 1643, Pelham Bay, N.Y.) Anglo-American religious leader.

In 1612 she married William Hutchinson, and they followed John Cotton to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. She organized weekly meetings of Boston women to discuss recent sermons and to express their own theological views. Before long, ministers and magistrates were attracted to her sessions, at which she criticized the narrow Puritan orthodoxy and espoused a "covenant of grace." Her opponents accused her of believing that God's grace had freed Christians from the need to observe established moral precepts. Tried for "traducing the ministers," she was sentenced to banishment; refusing to recant, she was excommunicated. In 1638 she and her husband established a colony at Aquidneck Island, which became part of Rhode Island.

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▪ American religious leader

née  Anne Marbury 

baptized July 20, 1591, Alford, Lincolnshire, England

died August or September 1643, Pelham Bay, New York [U.S.]

 religious liberal who became one of the founders of Rhode Island after her banishment from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

      Anne Marbury was the daughter of a silenced clergyman and grew up in an atmosphere of learning. She married William Hutchinson, a merchant, in 1612, and in 1634 they migrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anne Hutchinson soon organized weekly meetings of Boston women to discuss recent sermons and to give expression to her own theological views. Before long her sessions attracted ministers and magistrates as well. She stressed the individual's intuition as a means of reaching God and salvation, rather than the observance of institutionalized beliefs and the precepts of ministers. Her opponents accused her of antinomianism—the view that God's grace has freed the Christian from the need to observe established moral precepts.

      Hutchinson's criticism of the Massachusetts Puritans for what she considered to be their narrowly legalistic concept of morality and her protests against the authority of the clergy were at first widely supported by Bostonians. John Winthrop (Winthrop, John), however, opposed her, and she lost much of her support after he won election as governor. She was tried by the General Court chiefly for “traducing the ministers,” was convicted in 1637, and was sentenced to banishment. For a time in 1637–38 she was held in custody at the house of Joseph Weld, marshal of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Refusing to recant, she was then tried before the Boston Church and formally excommunicated.

      With some of her followers Hutchinson established a settlement (now Portsmouth) on the island of Aquidneck (now part of Rhode Island) in 1638. After the death of her husband in 1642, she settled on Long Island Sound, near present Pelham Bay, New York. In 1643 she and all her servants and children save one were killed by Indians, an event regarded by some in Massachusetts as a manifestation of divine judgment.

Additional Reading

David D. Hall (ed.), The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638, 2nd ed. (1990), collects documents including the records of Hutchinson's court examination. Selma R. Williams, Divine Rebel (1981); and Francis J. Bremer (ed.), Anne Hutchinson, Troubler of the Puritan Zion (1981), discuss her life.

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