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Scoundrels Who Made America Great
By Martin Henley Abbott Press
Copyright © 2016 Martin Henley
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-1946-6
CHAPTER 1
Anne Hutchinson
The Trials of the Puritan "Jezebel"
But for better or worse, her lot was cast in the seventeenth century, and her hand was to be felt in a theological tempest which shook the infant colony of Massachusetts to its very foundation.
Emory Battis, Saints and Sectaries
No woman made a more indelible mark on colonial history than Anne Hutchinson. In the Puritan, male-dominated society of 17th-century Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne Hutchinson was a rebel. At a time when women were relegated to the role of producing babies (Hutchinson had 15 children), she demanded the right to express her opinions and her religious convictions. Branded as a heretic she was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hutchinson, her husband William, and their children settled in southern New England, where with Roger Williams she cofounded the colony of Rhode Island. Some historians consider her the first feminist, others call her a champion of religious freedom, and some simply herald her dedication to free speech.
But the accomplishments of Anne Hutchinson defy niches and labels. Above all else, it was her indomitable will and uncompromising belief that being female did not limit her right to express her religious beliefs that is the hallmark of her legacy. In another era Anne Hutchinson would have been a suffragist, a minister, or a civil rights advocate. Instead, she was a time traveler — a 21st-century woman living in 17th-century New England.
Death came on the heels of barking dogs. Anne Hutchinson and her family were going about their daily chores at their farm at Pelham Bay, New Netherland, when she heard a commotion. Shielding her eyes against the bright August sun, she spotted the family's two big mongrels racing down the old Indian trail, headed straight for a group of Siwanoy warriors who were striding toward the farmhouse. Hutchinson called out to her son-in-law Will Collins to round up the dogs. The intrusion was not entirely unexpected. Neighbors had warned Hutchinson that the Siwanoy were on a vengeful spree. Over the previous few weeks warriors had attacked several homesteads in retribution for the massacring of 80 Siwanoy by Dutch soldiers. Despite the warriors' ominous painted faces, Hutchinson was confident that she and her family were safe. She trusted that God would protect them.
Most Puritans considered natives "savages," but Hutchinson believed that in God's eyes all people were one. As far as Hutchinson was concerned, the Siwanoy had no reason to harm her family, and she had no reason to fear them. She welcomed them as she would any guest visiting on a summer afternoon. When the sachem, Wampage, asked her to tie up the dogs, she complied. Once the dogs were restrained the warriors sprang into action. Brandishing hatchets and knives, they attacked Hutchinson, Collins, and her eight children. The unarmed settlers had no chance. After the bloodletting, the Siwanoy dragged their victims' mutilated bodies into the farmhouse and set it on fire.
Nine-year-old Susanna Hutchinson was picking blueberries in a meadow a short distance from the farmhouse when she heard the screams of her family and the bloodcurdling whoops of the warriors. Terrified, she hid in a crevice of an ancient granite rock in the center of the field. But it was too late; she had been spotted. A warrior yanked her out of the hiding place and threw her on the ground. She covered her eyes and waited for the end, but the deadly hatchet blow did not fall. Many of those who have researched and told her story believe she was saved by her red hair, for, rather than killing her, the Siwanoy took Susanna captive and renamed her "Autumn Leaf." Susanna assimilated into the tribe where she remained for several years until relatives in Boston ransomed her.
In Massachusetts Anne Hutchinson's enemies rejoiced at the news of her death. Her fate, they said, was just retribution for her sins. Concord pastor Peter Bulkeley spoke for many when he said, "Let her damned heresies, and the just vengeance of God, by which she perished, terrify all her seduced followers from having any more to do with her leaven." The Reverend Thomas Weld wrote from London, "Thus the Lord heard our groans to heaven, and freed us from this great and sore affliction." John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, delivered a pitiless epitaph: "Thus it has pleased the Lord to have compassion of his poor churches here, and to discover this great imposter, and instrument of Satan so fitted and trained to his service for interrupting the passage [of his] kingdom in this part of the world and poisoning the churches here...."
The depth of the scorn heaped on Hutchinson is at first glance puzzling. What misdeeds could a fervent Puritan wife of a successful textile merchant, and the mother of 15 children, possibly commit to reap such venom? There was no violence, enmity, or rancor in her heart. Rather, Anne Hutchinson was an outlier. In the male-dominated culture of Puritan Massachusetts Bay she spoke her mind freely, and she refused to bend to the will of the powerful men who governed the colony.
Anne Hutchinson's story actually began 57 years before her birth, with the establishment of the Church of England by Henry VIII. Henry's 24 years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon had produced a daughter, Mary, but no son. Determined to ensure the continuation of the Tudor dynasty, Henry petitioned Pope Clement VII to grant him an annulment. Henry contended that his marriage to Catherine was illicit because she was the widow of his deceased brother. The pope refused. Undaunted, Henry in quick succession secretly married Anne Boleyn, banished Catherine to More Castle in Hertfordshire, and established his own Protestant religion. In 1534 Parliament passed the Acts of Supremacy, establishing Henry as the "Protector and Only Supreme Head of the Church of England." But Henry, to whom Pope Leo X in 1521 had given the title "Defender of the Faith," was reluctant to dismiss all Catholic rituals. Throughout his reign the Church of England retained such Catholic ceremonies as the Mass and Holy Communion.
Henry was bitterly disappointed when on August 26, 1533, Anne Boleyn gave birth to a girl, Elizabeth. His limited patience strained, Henry accused Boleyn of adultery and plotting to assassinate him. On May 19, 1536, Boleyn was beheaded in the garden of the Tower of London. Two weeks after her execution, Henry continued his pattern of trading one wife for another. He married one of Anne Boleyn's ladies in waiting, Jane Seymour. In early October 1537, Seymour gave birth to a boy, the future Edward VI. Two weeks later she died from birthing complications. In the span of the next three years Henry married three more times. The first was a German princess, Anne of Cleves; after six months he had the marriage to a woman he called "The Mare of Flanders" annulled. His next queen, Catherine Howard, was executed for adultery. After Henry's death his last wife, Katherine Parr, served as Queen Regent until Edward was old enough to ascend the throne.
During his brief reign Edward VI accelerated the reformation begun by his father. He abolished clerical celibacy, eliminated the Mass, and changed church services from Latin to English. When Edward died at age 15, Mary the daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, succeeded him. Mary strove to undo her father's and stepbrother's religious machinations by restoring Catholicism as the official religion of England. Her zeal launched England into a reign of terror. "Bloody Mary" executed hundreds of prominent Protestants, many burned at the stake. After Mary's death in 1558 her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, restored the Anglican Church as the official Church of England.
Like her father, Elizabeth was reluctant to completely cut ties with the trappings of Catholicism. Ensuing theological disputes pitted Anglicans against each other. A conservative faction of the Anglican Church strived to "purify" the English church. Labeled "Puritans" by middle-of-the-road Anglicans, these orthodox followers of Calvinism jettisoned all vestiges of Catholic pomp and ornamentation from their church services. They scorned statues, stained-glass windows, and altars as "popish" artifacts. Their Sunday services supplanted the ornate liturgy of the Mass with fire-and-brimstone sermons measured in hours rather than minutes.
The stern Puritan theology dictated intense study of Scripture. Reading the Bible, meditating on its meanings, and searching for one's inner spirit was the Puritan way. Puritan social life was embedded in their religion. Hutchinson biographer and descendent Eva LaPlante noted, "Scripture gave them [Puritans] their laws, much of their culture and most of their understanding of human relationships and emotions." In an era when novels did not exist, studying Scripture, discussing sermons, and debating the finer points of God's revelations provided intellectual as well as spiritual stimulation.
Puritans followed the teachings of French theologian John Calvin. Calvin preached that God through his saving grace predestined salvation. Before a person's birth, the Almighty determined who would enjoy eternal bliss or suffer eternal damnation. According to Calvin, God selects those who will enter heaven, and He bestows on those chosen few His "covenant of grace." Calvin said, "God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation." Living a moral life, behaving charitably toward others, and obeying the Commandments would not open the gates of heaven unless one was already among the elected. Puritans disparaged attempts to earn one's way into heaven, calling these futile attempts at salvation a "covenant of works." Only through rigid self-examination and faith in God's gift of grace ("covenant of grace") could one determine if he or she was among the chosen few.
One of the most outspoken of Puritan clerics was a charismatic preacher from Boston, in Lincolnshire — John Cotton. Cotton maintained that, rather than bringing one closer to God, mindless rituals such as rote prayers, genuf lecting, and the taking of sacraments were impediments to direct revelation. Cotton's preaching set him apart from mainstream Anglicans. His sermons resounded with hopelessness for Anglicans who believed they could obtain salvation by obeying the commandments and living a charitable life. As his influence and nonconformist tendencies grew, Cotton attracted a larger congregation. Included among his followers was a successful Lincolnshire merchant, William Hutchinson, from nearby Alford, and his wife — Anne. But many mainstream clerics resented the dynamic preacher's influence. Chief among his critics was the powerful Anglican bishop William Laud of London.
Laud, who would become the archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 under the Catholic-leaning Charles I, strove for uniformity in church rituals and worship. Cotton's conservative teaching marked him as a religious dissident. In 1632 Bishop Laud summoned Cotton to the High Court of Commission — unwelcome news for the preacher. The synod of Anglican bishops had the power to excommunicate, mutilate (often by cropping ears), and imprison seditious clergy. Cotton was not interested in testing his chances in a tribunal administered by a prelate who sympathized with Catholicism. He decided to seek refuge across the Atlantic in the distant Puritan colony in New England — Massachusetts Bay. Cotton's hasty departure shocked his congregation. Many vowed to follow, including William and Anne Hutchinson. This was a momentous decision for the Hutchinson clan that would, in a short time, earn Anne admiration from some and scorn from many.
Anne Hutchinson, the daughter of a minister, Francis Marbury, was ardent in her devotion to Calvinism. Born during the Renaissance, she was a precocious and fortunate child. In an era when women rarely received a formal education, her Cambridge-educated father nurtured her intellectual development with a heavy dose of theological reading material. At age four she was reading passages from the Bible and the quintessential Puritan tome, Foxe's Book of Martyrs: A History of the Lives, Suffering and Triumphant Deaths of the Early Christians and the Protestant Martyrs. Anne's growth into young womanhood was marked by deep religious convictions sustained by her Bible reading and personal meditations. During one of her meditations she experienced a life-changing event: she claimed that she received a message from God. The Lord, she said, had spoken "by the voice of his own spirit to my soul."
Later she would insist that this direct contact with the Almighty had bestowed on her the ability to prophesize. The more immediate impact was the revelation that she was one of God's chosen. His absolute promise of salvation convinced her that one's relationship to the Almighty and one's place in the hereafter could be sealed only through direct revelation. Clerical interpretations of Scripture, according to Hutchinson, detracted from rather than sustained faith: assurance of salvation came not through sermons that preached the efficacy of human activities, but only through a direct encounter with the Almighty, such as she had experienced. This was a precarious position to take in a country that was in the midst of religious turmoil and persecution. To some Puritans, her epiphany sounded dangerously close to the radical theology of the Dutch Protestant sect Familism (Family of Love). The Familists preached nonviolence, the equality of men and women, and the notion that free grace obviated the need to obey God's laws (antinomianism). The aura of anarchy that tinged Hutchinson's religious convictions would prove in time to be more a liability than her actual words and deeds.
By 1634, buffeted by Bishop Laud's persecutions, thousands of Puritans immigrated to New England. That summer the Hutchinson family joined the exodus. With servants, eight children, and building materials to construct a new home, they boarded the merchant ship Griffin in London, their destination the Puritan sanctuary — Massachusetts Bay Colony. There they planned to join their minister, John Cotton, in Boston Township, where they would be able practice their religion without fear of reprisals. Moreover, their voyage had an economic motive. The English textile business was mired in a depression and colonists in New England were clamoring for manufactured cloth. Boston's natural harbor offered an ideal location for developing a transatlantic textile trading business. By working with partners on both sides of the Atlantic, William Hutchinson was certain he could build a profitable business in the new world.
One would be hard-pressed to conceive of a more miserable journey than crossing the North Atlantic on a 17th-century English merchant ship. From London to Boston, battling the Prevailing Westerlies, a typical 100-foot, square-rigged cargo ship would slide and dip through four-to-six-foot swells of endless gray sea for eight weeks or longer. Low-status passengers spent the majority of their day in the "tween deck," a tight space below the main deck and cargo holds. Five-foot-high walls forced adults to stoop each time they moved around the tight area. Meager ventilation came through small deck hatches that were sealed during foul weather. Adjacent to and below the passenger area, the holds reeked with livestock miasma. The noxious odors seeped into spaces already filled with the stench of vomit and chamber pots.
So that they would not interfere with the crew's work, below-deck passengers were allowed only a brief daily respite on deck. Daily fare consisted of rations of salt beef or pork, which usually turned rotten halfway through the voyage. In a matter of weeks, algae and insects spoiled fresh water stored in casks. Pirates, storms, and contagious diseases added to the hazards. Despite all this, 21,000 men, women, and children, including the Hutchinsons, sailed to New England during the "Great Migration" between 1620 and 1640.
After eight arduous weeks at sea, the Griffin dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, and Anne Hutchinson caught her first glimpse of her new home. The historian Michael Winship noted that the reality of life on the frontier of civilization did not always match expectations. "Perhaps Hutchinson had entertained hopes about Massachusetts as a promised land for God's chosen people such as herself. But what she saw as her boat pulled into Boston Harbor did not look like Zion. On a small peninsula, marshland and pastures filled with tree stumps surrounded three small hills on which sprawled a raw four-year-old town of eight hundred inhabitants...." For a woman accustomed to a life of prosperity, Massachusetts Bay was a shock. Hutchinson told one of her fellow travelers that, if God had not revealed to her that England would be destroyed, her heart would have sunk at the sight of Boston.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Scoundrels Who Made America Great by Martin Henley. Copyright © 2016 Martin Henley. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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