Anne Hutchinson

“ And, as Anne Hutchinson answered these questions clearly and sensibly, quoting passages from the Scriptures to prove that she had done nothing unlawful, nothing worthy of condemnation, perhaps she may have felt, even among her enemies and with no hand stretched out toward her, a thrill of pride in her heart that she, a woman without the influence of wealth or station, was pitting her intellect against that of the wisest men in the Colony. ”

“ Mistress Anne Hutchinson, founder of the Antinomian party of New England, was a woman who exerted great influence upon the religious and political free thought of those colonies. She was the daughter of an English clergyman, and with her husband, followed Pastor Cotton, to whom she was much attached, to this country in 1634, and was admitted a member of the Boston church, becoming a resident of Massachusetts one hundred and forty years before the Revolutionary war. She was of commanding intellect, and exerted a powerful influence upon the infant colony. ”

“ Exile, imprisonment and even death, awaited the most eminent citizens; Winthrop's entry into Boston was met by gloomy silence, and for it all, Welde and Symmes protested Anne Hutchinson to be responsible, and denounced her as a heretic and a witch. ”

“ It is very probable that Anne Hutchinson may have known the Dudley family after their return to Lincolnshire, and certainly in the first flush of her New England experiences was likely to have had intimate relations with them. Her opinions, so far as one can disentangle them from the mass of testimony and discussion, seem to have been in great degree, those held by the early Quakers, but they had either not fully developed in her own mind before she left England, or had not been pronounced enough to attract attention. ”

“ Shortly afterward, Anne Hutchinson boldly preached the doctrine of Antinomianism, which declares that a man is not saved by the help of good works, but by divine grace alone. In other words, no matter how wickedly he lives, his salvation is wholly independent of it. She went to Rhode Island and afterward to New Netherland, where she was killed in one of the attacks of the Indians upon the Dutch settlements.
The Quakers greatly annoyed the New England colonists. ”

“ While most of the women of the Puritan colonies seem to have been too busy with their household duties 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. ”

“ Had John Cotton been alive in the year in which the Quakers chose Boston as their working ground, his gentle and conciliating nature, shown so fully in the trial of Anne Hutchinson, would have found some means of reconciling their theories with such phases of the Puritan creed as were in sympathy with them. But a far different mind held his place, and had become the leading minister in the Colony. ”

“ Hutchinson's character. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson had been one of Cotton's ardent disciples in old Boston. She crossed the sea with her husband that she might sit under his ministry in New England. She was a woman (p. 330) cursed with a natural gift for leadership in an age that had no place for such women. Wonder-working Providence, ch. lxii. "This Masterpiece of Womens wit," the railing Captain Johnson calls her, and certainly her answers before the Massachusetts General Court go to show that she was not inferior in cleverness to any of the magistrates or ministers. ”

“ Dudley was one of the chief movers in the course resolved upon, and mourned over Cotton, who still held to Anne Hutchinson, and wrote and spoke of her as one who "was well beloved, and all the faithful embraced her conference, and blessed God for her fruitful discourses."
Mr. Welde, on the contrary, one of her fiercest opponents, described her as "a woman of haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment inferior to many women." ”

“ He was identified with all the important political and religious movements of the colony, and was one of the moderators of the first New England synod that was held in Cambridge in the case of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. His death, which was caused by a prevalent epidemic, was considered a public loss. ”

“ All the more liberal spirits saw that Massachusetts could henceforth be no home for them, and made haste to other points. Coddington led a colony to Rhode Island, made up chiefly of the fifty-eight who had been disarmed, and in process of time became a Quaker. This was the natural ending for many, the heart of Anne Hutchinson's doctrine being really a belief in the "Inward Light," a doctrine which seems to have outraged every Puritan susceptibility for fully a hundred years, and until the reaction began, which has made individual judgment the only creed common to the people of New England. ”

“ Men and women alike, forswore the desired stiffness, retaining it only in their opinions. By the time that Anne Bradstreet had settled in Andover, bodily indulgence so far as adornment or the gratification of appetite went, had become a matter for courts to decide upon. Whether Simon Bradstreet gave up the curling locks which, while not flowing to his shoulders as in Colonel Hutchinson's case, still fell in thick rings about his neck, we have no means of knowing. ”

“ The best that the time had to give entered into both, and though Hutchinson's name and life are better known, it is rather because of the beauty and power with which his story was told, by a wife who worshipped him, than because of actually greater desert. But the first rush of free thought ennobled many men who in the old chains would have lived lives with nothing in them worth noting, and names full of meaning are on every page of the story of the time. ”

“ His intense will had often drawn concessions from Winthrop at which his feelings revolted and he pursued every sort of sectary with a zeal that never flagged. Hutchinson wrote: "He was zealous beyond measure against all sorts of heretics," and Roger Williams said bitterly: "It is known who hindered but never promoted the liberty of other men's consciences." ”

“ In a time when, for the Cavalier element, license still ruled and lawless passion was glorified by every play writer, the Puritan demanded a different standard, and lived a life of manly purity in strange contrast to the grossness of the time. Of Hutchinson and Dudley and thousands of their contemporaries the same record held good: "Neither in youth nor riper years could the most fair or enticing woman draw him into unnecessary familiarity or dalliance. ”

“ With August came the famous Synod of Cambridge, the first ever held in New England, in which the Church set about defining its own position and denouncing the Hutchinsonians. Eighty-two heresies were decided to have arisen, all of which were condemned, and this being settled, Cotton was admonished, and escaped exile only by meekly explaining away his errors. Wheelwright, refusing to yield, was sentenced to imprisonment and exile; Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings were declared seditious and disorderly, and prohibited, and the Synod separated, triumphant. The field was their own. ”

“ Rosalie’s mother stroked Anna’s head and spoke very softly, “My darling! My darling!” She said, “My darling, your father has decided. Your father knows best. Men always know best, my darling.”
“It’s my right, mother. It’s my right. It’s always Flora. Oh, why should it always be Flora?”
“Dear Anna. Poor Anna. You must be reasonable, dear Anna. We women must always be reasonable. Don’t you see that your father thinks of me? He thinks my eldest girl—my dear eldest girl—ought to stay at home to look after her mother. It’s on my account, dear Anna. He thinks of me.” ”

“ Little Ann answeered, smiling approvingly over her bit of sewing. “Father, I wish you'd try and teach me some of the things you know about business. I've learned a little by just listening to you talk; but I should so like to feel as if I could follow you when you argue. I do so enjoy hearing you argue. It's just an education.”
“Women are not up to much at business,” reflected Hutchinson. “If you'd been a boy, I'd have trained you same as I've trained myself. You're a sharp little thing, Ann, but you're a woman. ”

“ Oh, happy is the man that hath children for they are as arrows in the quiver of a giant. But it’s the woman is the arrowbearer! It’s the woman pays.”
Lo, there had come to this intolerance the longing—“Here!”—that Anna’s bosom had, the urge to hold a tiny scrap against her breast, to have her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby fingers. It had o’erborne the other. She had thrown herself upon its flood; not yielded to it as one drawn in by rising waters, but tempestuously engulfed by it and borne away upon it as swallowed up and borne away in Harry’s arms when “Rosalie! ”

“ He flushed awkwardly—"you can't talk that sort of patriotic stuff, you know, but this is, well this is a chap's country, and I've figured it out it's got to come before my mother. It's got to. She says it will kill her if I go. I believe it will, Sabre. And my God, if it does—but I can't help it. I know what's the right thing. I'll tell you something else." His face, which had been red and cloudy as with tears, became dark and passionate. "I'll tell you something else. People are saying things about me and to me because I'm young and unmarried and haven't got a wife to support. ”

“ Under her father, all males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion over it; no females owned any part of the world or could do anything with it. All the males in this world—her father, and Robert and Harold her brothers, and all the other boys and men one sometimes saw—did mysterious and extraordinary things; and all the females in this world—her mother, and Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters, and Ellen the cook and Gertrude the maid—did ordinary and unexciting and generally rather tiresome things. ”

“ She to see him idler! She to pass him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused—he knew no reason for it—a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath. ”

“ Marrapit's door, this doubly distressed gentlewoman had lived in retirement in a bed-sitting-room in Angel Street. She did not purpose immediately taking another situation. This woman had sipped the delights of Herons' Holt; her heart was there, and for a month or two, as, sighing over her lot, she determined, she would brood in solitude upon the paradise she had lost before challenging new fortunes.
The ripples of the abduction of the Rose reached her. This was a masterly woman, and instanter she took the tide upon the flood.
Mrs. Major was not a newspaper reader. ”

“ In this order they struggled up the stairs, High Jinks and Low Jinks backwards, and the smirks enlarged into panting giggles. Halfway up came a loud crack.
"What the devil's that?" said Sabre, sweating and gasping.
"I think it's the back of my dress, sir," said High Jinks.
"Good lord!" (Convulsive giggles.) "You know, Low, you're practically sitting on the dashed thing. You've twisted yourself round in some extraordinary way—"
Agonising giggles.
Mabel appeared in the hail beneath. "Raise it up, Rebecca. Raise it, Sarah. How can you expect to move, stooping like that?" ”

“ You never did really try England. And you know how beautiful it'll be in the country, with the primroses in bloom and the young lambs in the fields.” The caressing hand grew even softer. “And you're not going to forget how mother believed in the invention; you can't do that.”
Hutchinson lifted his head and looked at her.
“Eh, Ann,” he said, “you are a comfortable little body. You've got a way with you just like your poor mother had. You always say the right thing to help a chap pull himself together. ”

“ This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He regarded the hansom at the door: “That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy princes don't come in cabs.”
“The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle, kiss me.”
She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which they clung.
They screamed, “Let me go!”
David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: “Take away your hand, mother!”
Angela gasped: “Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!” ”

“ She plunged. “If Heaven should grant that I may find the Rose, I implore you not to distress me by offering me the reward you are holding out. I could not take it. I know you can ill afford it. Further than that, to have the joy of giving you back your Rose would be reward enough for me. And to know that she was safe with you, though I—I should never see her again, that would make me happy till the end of my days.”
Her nobility smote Mr. Marrapit. Cruelly, shamefully, he had misjudged her. Her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, very gently Mrs. Major closed the door ”

“ They described her as “of Field’s Bank” and always drove the word “unique” hand in hand with every mention of her parts. “Unique personality”; “unique position”; “unique among professional women”; “unique,” said one, “in combining notable beauty and rare business acumen; an office which she attends daily and a charming home; a profession, three beautiful children, and a brilliant husband.”
The syntax is weak, but the truth is in it and those children were to be envied in their mother.
Miss Prescott, when she came, did not displace the Muffet. She was installed additional to the Muffet ”