shillings a bushel, at the time when a tax of five hundred and fifty pounds was levied to pay the expenses of the war, and the towns were required to furnish themselves with military stores, and the individual citizens to keep themselves provided with arms and ammunition.

While the Pequot campaign was going on, still more serious embarrassments of a different description were crippling the energy of the settlement in the Bay. When Patrick and Stoughton were despatched to Connecticut, they left the elder colony rent by faction, and in imminent danger of civil war.

Scarcely were the Massachusetts magistrates rid of Roger Williams, when they found themselves engaged again in a much more threatening contest than what he had raised, and much more difficult for them to conduct, for various reasons, one of which was, that the head of opposition was a capable and resolute woman. Hutchinson. The name of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson is dismally conspicuous in the early history of New England. She perhaps well-nigh brought it to an end very near to its beginning.

Mrs. Ann

1634.

She had come to Massachusetts in the same vessel which bore the copy of the commission, to the two Archbishops and nine others of the Privy Council, to regulate Sept. 18. foreign plantations and call in charters, a coincidence suited to render internal agitations doubly unwelcome.1 She had accompanied her husband from their home at Alford, near Boston, in Lincolnshire, where they had enjoyed a good estate. He is described by Winthrop as "a man of a very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife."2 She had spirit and talent enough for both. In England, she had found no satisfactory ministrations of religion but those of John Cotton, and of John Wheelwright, her brother-in-law; and her unwillingness to lose the benefit of Cotton's

1 Winthrop, I. 143.

2 Ibid., 295.

preaching induced her to emigrate. On the voyage, some eccentric speculations of hers, and pretensions to direct revelation, had given displeasure to her fellow-passenger, Mr. Symmes, who soon after their arrival became minister of Charlestown, and, in that capacity, one of her active opponents. Small causes have often great results; contradiction on one part leads to extravagant assertion on the other; and it is not impossible that the accidental petulances of that uncomfortable voyage may have had something to do with the crisis in the fortunes of Massachusetts which followed. As early as the time when Mrs. Hutchinson and her husband were nominated as members of the Boston church, Symmes gave some information of her vagaries, which occasioned her admission to be delayed. She soon recommended herself widely as a kind and serviceable neighbor, especially to persons of her own sex in times of sickness; and by these qualities, united with her energy of character and vivacity of mind, she acquired esteem and influence.

October.

The first mention of her by Winthrop is in these words: "One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of a ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification. From these errors grew many branches; as, first, our union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor graces, other than such as are in hypocrites, nor any other sanctification but the Holy Ghost himself." 1

Mrs. Hutchinson attached importance to her doctrines and expositions, sufficient to lead her to undertake a sort of public ministration of them. It had been the practice of the male members of the Boston church to hold meetings by themselves, for recapitulating and discussing the sermons 1 Winthrop, I. 200.

of their ministers. Mrs. Hutchinson instituted similar assemblies for her own sex, which, at one time, were held twice a week. In the want of social meetings of other sorts, it is not matter of surprise that they were attended by nearly a hundred females, some of whom were among the principal matrons of the town. Her bold criticisms were set off by a voluble eloquence, and an imposing familiarity with Scripture. She bestowed unqualified approbation upon Cotton and Wheelwright,' whom she declared to be "under a covenant of grace." Of the other ministers of the Colony, she spoke more and more distrustfully and slightingly, till by and by she came to pronounce them in downright terms to be "under a covenant of works."

When the strife broke out in public action, Mrs. Hutchinson had been two full years in the country. The principal proceedings of the dispute with Williams had passed before her eyes, without any evidence, now extant, of its having attracted her attention; from which fact a not unnatural inference is, that it had not all the prominence at the time which has been since ascribed to it. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hutchinson had secured the chamAntinomian pionship of no less a personage than Vane, the controversy. young Governor of Massachusetts,2 besides that of Dummer and Coddington, eminent among the magistrates, and of other influential persons. The country towns and churches proved to be, on the whole, strongly opposed to her, while all the members of the Boston church were her partisans except five. Of these five, however, were Wilson, the pastor, and Winthrop, lately

1 Wheelwright was admitted a member of the Boston church, June 12, 1636, seventeen days after his arrival. He had been "a silenced minister sometimes in England." (Winthrop, I. 200.)

2 Vane was lodged with Cotton, in a house which he gave to Cotton when

he left the country. It remained as part of a building which was removed only about thirty years ago. It stood upon the side of the hill, several feet back from the western side of Tremont Street, its front fence beginning some thirty feet from the corner which Tremont Street made with Pemberton Hill.

advanced again so far as to the second place in the government. Old friends were estranged, and offensive language was freely used. Mrs. Hutchinson went out of church as the hitherto venerated Wilson rose to speak, and others followed her example of affront in the presence of other preachers.

1

Interference

ters.

1636.

Oct. 25.

"The other ministers in the Bay, hearing of these things, came to Boston at the time of a General Court, and entered conference in private with them, to the end they might know the certainty of these of the ministhings, and, if need were, they might write to the church of Boston about them, to prevent, if it were possible, the dangers which seemed hereby to hang over that and the rest of the churches." For the present, Cotton gave them satisfaction. Wheelwright was not so explicit. A proposal was made in the Boston church to associate him in office with its pastor and teacher. Winthrop, acting with the concurrence of Wilson, whom the delicacy of his position compelled to reserve, with difficulty succeeded in parrying this blow.2 But the transaction did not fail to leave heart-burnings. Wheelwright was presently invited to a church gathered at Mount Wollaston.

Oct. 30.

Dec. 10.

of Vane.

These annoyances, together with that of the impending Indian war, and perhaps others of a more personal nature, disturbed the mind of the young and inexperienced Governor. He had scarcely finished half his term of service when he "called a Court of Deputies, to the end he might have free leave of the coun- Perplexity try," having received "letters from his friends in England, which necessarily required his presence there.” In answer to the dissuasive considerations which were urged, "the Governor brake forth into tears, and professed that, howsoever the causes propounded for his departure were such as did concern the utter ruin of his outward 2 Ibid., 202.

1 Winthrop, I. 201.

estate, yet he would rather have hazarded all than have gone from them at this time, if something else had not pressed him more; viz. the inevitable danger of God's judgments to come upon us for these differences and dissensions which he saw amongst us, and the scandalous imputations brought upon himself, as if he should be the cause of all, and therefore he thought it best for him to give place for a time, &c." This explanation did but cause more earnest remonstrances; and though they were withdrawn, and the Court finally consented to his departure, further expostulations on the part of the Boston church, to which he "expressed himself to be an obedient child," finally turned him from his design.1

A meeting of magistrates and elders was held, "to advise about discovering and pacifying the differences among the churches in point of opinion." Dudley and "another of the magistrates" urged the expediency of a frank declaration of sentiments. The discussion which followed was mainly between the English Commonwealth's future minister for foreign affairs, and Cromwell's future chaplain. The Governor expressed displeasure that the clergy had been meeting for consultation "without his privity." Hugh Peter, who may have apprehended coercive measures on his part, "with all due reverence" reproved him, and told him "how it had sadded the ministers' spirits, that he should be jealous of their meetings, or seem to. restrain their liberty, &c.," and "that before he came, within less than two years since, the churches were at peace, &c.," and "besought him humbly to consider his youth, and short experience in the ways of God, and to beware of peremptory conclusions, which he perceived

1 Winthrop, I. 207, 208. Winthrop says that Vane first laid his letters before"the council," by which Hubbard (Chap. XXXV.) understood the Assistants for life lately chosen (viz. Winthrop and Dudley, besides the Gover

nor). The learned editor of Winthrop, however, apparently with better reason, considers "the council" here spoken of to have been the whole board of magistrates. (Winthrop, I. 207, note.)