Who wrote the trial of anne hutchinson

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Shirley Chisholm to better understand her experience, and the experience of women everywhere in America. Ida B. It was all rather severe. It was all that was left them. Women could not be ministers, could not vote on church matters, and could not even talk in church. They entered the church meetinghouse through a separate door and sat together on a separate side of the building.

Her meetings grew in popularity. She added a second weekly session to accommodate all the women who wanted to hear her wisdom. Hutchinson began to raise eyebrows in the colony when word leaked that in her study groups she had questioned the Biblical interpretations of local ministers in their sermons. In particular, Anne took issue with ministers who suggested that people need to display their faith, perform good deeds, and act as a decent Puritan should in order to show that they have been saved.

The Puritan ministers undoubtedly saw a problem with the suggestion that people could sit idly by and expect salvation—it was all too easy and might discourage rule-following and even, God forbid, skipping church services.

The crisis deepened in when Hutchinson, upset with a sermon being delivered by John Wilson, a minister hand-picked by Governor Winthrop to replace a minister favored by Anne, stood up and walked out of the meetinghouse.

A number of other women followed her out. For Hutchinson, things turned toward the better. Her political supporter, Henry Vane, was elected governor, replacing John Winthrop. And she soon found a new minister who shared her theological views. John Wheelwright arrived from England in May , and began preaching in Boston the next month. Anne Hutchinson was called to a meeting in December She faced a panel of seven ministers who demanded to know her views on the Scripture and on their own preaching.

Two and a half months later, ministers meeting in Cambridge for a Synod identified 82 errors held by Hutchinson that had been recorded in their meeting with her. Winthrop succeeded in dispatching Reverend Wheelwright to Mount Wollaston, where he could cause less harm. May 17, was a turning point in the history of Massachusetts Bay.

Magistrates and freemen assembled in Cambridge Common to decide who would control the colony. Supporters of John Winthrop and his orthodox theology carried the day. Winthrop was elected Governor for a second time, replacing Henry Vane, who had been strongly backed by the Hutchinson.

When Winthrop decided to put Hutchinson on trial, he determined that his prospects for conviction were better in Cambridge than in Boston. The residents of Cambridge tended to be landed gentry and more conservative than the residents of Boston, who held more mercantile interests.

The trial of Anne Hutchinson began on November 7, in a thatched-roof meetinghouse in Cambridge. Eight ministers also strode into court, all on hand to offer their testimony. The General Court, whose authority derived from the royal charter, was an all-powerful body in the colony.

It mixed legislative, executive, and judicial functions. It legislated on all aspects of colonial life, from the color of clothes that could be worn to requiring attendance at Sunday services.

The only check on its power was the knowledge of its members that rulings that appeared too arbitrary or self-serving could prompt calls for a revocation of the charter. Governor Winthrop, both the chief prosecutor and the chief judge, hoped that the trial would fortify his position of power and unify the colony, which had become divided and weakened by fighting over religious issues, especially the question of salvation.

And you have maintained a meeting or general assembly in your house that hath been condemned by the general assembly as a thing not tolerable or comely in the sight of your God nor fitting for your sex.

Nothing Winthrop had alleged Hutchinson had done amounted to a criminal offence. Hutchinson and Winthrop proceeded to trade Biblical passages, either as evidence for or against the right of a woman to provide instruction on the meaning of Scripture.

Winthrop looked to the ministers in court, hoping they might have something to say that would add meat to the charges against Hutchinson. None took the bait. Winthrop issued the command and six ministers testified.

You say they preached a covenant of works and are not able ministers. We shall therefore give you a little more time to consider of it, and therefore desire that you attend the court again in the morning. Hutchinson is deluded by the Devil. Anne was not done. This had been the thing that has been the root of all the mischief.

Of what, exactly, the court was less than clear. The finding seems to rest both on the heresy of claiming a revelation and sedition, in resisting the lawful authority of ministers. Winthrop summed up the proceedings and asked for a vote. The growing tensions of the era became known as the Antinomian Controversy.

At her trial in November , Hutchinson was personally interrogated by Winthrop, who claimed that she had defamed the ministers by questioning their Bible teaching. She challenged Winthrop to prove his claim, defiantly answering his questions with challenging ones of her own. Then Hutchinson made a statement that sealed her fate: she claimed that her revelations came directly from God, which was a clear case of heresy in Puritan Massachusetts. The magistrates seized on the moment and quickly banished her from the community.

Hutchinson was excommunicated from the Church of Boston on March 22, , and banished. With her husband, she joined a colony in what is now Portsmouth, Rhode Island, joining Roger Williams. Her husband died in , and Hutchinson moved to Long Island Sound, which was held under Dutch jurisdiction, to flee the continued persecution from the Massachusetts colony.

The local Native American tribespeople, the Siwanoy, were angered by the new settlers, and in , Hutchinson and most of her children and servants were killed. In a society where all communication with God was conducted through and interpreted by officials of the church, a questioning of these spiritual relationships was a seen as a direct attack.

News of these groups spread and attendance at the Hutchinson home swelled to around eighty persons per session, including both women and men. Because of the popularity of these meetings, Hutchinson developed both allies and enemies within the colony. Amidst political and religious battles, she was deemed a threat and put on trial for her heretical views and actions by John Winthrop, who had won governorship of the colony in She was found guilty of lewd conduct and blasphemy and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in March of that same year.

Following banishment, Hutchinson, her family, and many of her followers, called Antinomians—members of a religion who feel that they are not under obligation to follow the rules and codes set out by religious authorities—moved to Rhode Island and then later to Long Island.

In , in their new home, a war between Dutch settlers and Native Americans broke out, and Hutchinson was killed, along with all but one of her children living with her at the time.