es and their numerous children to concern
themselves extensively with public affairs, there was this one woman,
Anne Hutchinson, who has gained lasting fame as the cause of the
greatest religious and political disturbance occurring in Massachusetts
before the days of the Revolution. Many are the references in the early
writers to this radical leader and her followers. Some of the most
prominent men and women in the colony were inclined to follow her, and
for a time it appeared that hers was to be the real power of the day;
great was the excitement. Thomas Hutchinson in his _History of
Massachusetts Bay Colony_, told of her trial and banishment:
"Countenanced and encouraged by Mr. Vane and Mr. Cotton, she advanced
doctrines and opinions which involved the colony in disputes and
contensions; and being improved to civil as well as religious purposes,
had like to have produced ruin both to church and state."

Anne Hutchinson was the daughter of Francis Marbury, a prominent
clergyman of Lincolnshire, England. Intensely religious as a child, she
was deeply influenced when a young woman by the preaching of John
Cotton. The latter, not being able to worship as he wished in England,
moved to the Puritan colony in the New World, and Anne Hutchinson, upon
her arrival at Boston, frankly confessed that she had crossed the sea
solely to be under his preaching in his new home.

Many of the prominent men of the community soon became her followers:
Sir Harry Vane, Governor of the colony; her brother-in-law, the Rev.
John Wheelwright; William Coddington, a magistrate of Boston; and even
Cotton himself, leader of the church and supposedly orthodox of the
orthodox. That this was enough to turn the head of any woman may well be
surmised, especially when we remember that she was presumed to be the
silent and weaker vessel,--to find suddenly learned men and even the
greatest clergymen of the community sitting at her feet and hearing her
doctrines. It is difficult to determine the real state of affairs
concerning this woman and her teachings. Nothing unless, possibly the
witchcraft delusion at Salem, excited the colony as did this
disturbance in both church and state. While much has been written, so
much of partisanship is displayed in all the statements that it is with
great difficulty that we are able really to separate the facts from
jealousy and bitterness. During the first few months of her stay she
seems to have been commended for her f