American Jezebel Read Free

stand for hours before scores of seated men, parrying their every Gospel quotation, replying again and again with wit? This book is a response to these and other bedeviling questions. Through it, I hope, Anne Hutchinson may claim her rightful place as America’s founding mother.

1
ENEMY OF THE STATE
    “Anne Hutchinson is present,” a male voice announced from somewhere in the crowded meetinghouse, momentarily quieting the din that filled its cavernous hall. The meetinghouse of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a square structure of timber and clay with a thatched roof, served as the community’s city hall, church, and courthouse—the latter its role this chilly Tuesday in November 1637. Hearing the news that the defendant had arrived, scores of bearded heads in black felt hats turned to find the one woman in the crowd.
    There was nothing auspicious about Anne Hutchinson’s appearance as she stood in the doorway alongside several male relatives and supporters, awaiting the start of her trial. She was forty-six years old, of average height and bearing, with an unremarkable face. Her petticoat fell almost to the ground, revealing only the tips of her leather boots. Against the cold she wore a wool mantua, or cloak. A white coif covered her hair, as was the custom of the day. Besides that and her white linen smock and neckerchief, she wore all black. She was a stranger to no one present, having ministered as midwife and nurse to many of their wives and children. All knew her to be an active member of the church of Boston, the wife of the wealthy textile merchant William Hutchinson, the mother of twelve living children, and the grandmother of one, a five-day-old boy who just that Sunday had been baptized. There was, in short, no outer sign to suggest she was an enemy of the state.
    Enemy she was, though, indeed the greatest threat Massachusetts had ever known. More than a few men in the room, including several of the ministers, considered her a witch. Others believed the Devil had taken over her soul. The governor, John Winthrop, who was waiting in an antechamber of the meetinghouse to begin the trial over which he would preside, suspected her of using her devilish powers to subjugatemen by establishing “the community of women” to foster “their abominable wickedness.”
    Anne Hutchinson’s greatest crime, and the source of her power, was the series of weekly public meetings she held at her house to discuss Scripture and theology. At first, in 1635, the evening meetings had been just for women, who then were generally encouraged to gather in small groups to gossip and offer mutual support. Soon scores of women, enchanted by her intelligence and magnetism, flocked to hear her analysis of the week’s Scripture reading, which many of them preferred to the ministers’ latest interpretation. “Being a woman very helpful in times of childbirth and other occasions of bodily infirmities, [Hutchinson] easily insinuated herself into the affections of many,” an official observed. Her “pretense was to repeat [the ministers’] sermons,” the governor added, “but when that was done, she would comment upon the doctrines, interpret passages at her pleasure, and expound dark places of Scripture, and make it serve her turn,” going beyond “wholesome truths” to “set forth her own stuff.” One minister, Thomas Weld, reported that her “custom was for her scholars to propound questions and she (gravely sitting in the chair) did make answers thereunto.” This was especially grievous in a time when the single chair in every house was for the use of the man alone.
    Men had begun to accompany their wives to Hutchinson’s meetings in 1636, and as her audiences swelled she offered a second session of religious instruction each week, just as the colonial ministers liked to give a Thursday lecture as well as their Sunday sermon. The Reverend Weld lamented that members of her audience, “being tainted, conveyed the infection to