urt ruined with
their posterity; and thereupon was banished, and the meanwhile she was
committed to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her."

Mrs. Hutchinson passed next winter accordingly under the watch and ward
of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now
Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to
Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John Cotton,
who had been her friend, turning against her.

Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he
chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs.
Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to
withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified
adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe
measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the
Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was
arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous
kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all
endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they
were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to
hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court
proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and
those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of
Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor
Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the
judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded theology instead of
law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, "had broken no law,
either of God or of man."

Banishment was the sentence pronounced, and after the church which had
so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited
upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his
property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did
also many others whose opinions had brought them under the censure of
the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the
head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted
wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to
Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep
which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far
from bei