The character of this female suggests a train of thought which will form
as natural an Introduction to her story, as most of the Prefaces to
Gay's Fables, or the tales of Prior; besides that, the general soundness
of the moral may excuse any want of present applicability. We will not
look for a living resemblance of Mrs. Hutchinson, though the search
might not be altogether fruitless. But there are portentous
indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings
of the gentle sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of
those public women, whereof one was a burden too grievous for our
fathers. The press, however, is now the medium through which feminine
ambition chiefly manifests itself; and we will not anticipate the period
(trusting to be gone hence ere it arrive) when fair orators shall be as
numerous as the fair authors of our own day. The hastiest glance may
show how much of the texture and body of cisatlantic literature is the
work of those slender fingers from which only a light and fanciful
embroidery has heretofore been required, that might sparkle upon the
garment without enfeebling the web. Woman's intellect should never give
the tone to that of man; and even her morality is not exactly the
material for masculine virtue. A false liberality, which mistakes the
strong division-lines of Nature for arbitrary distinctions, and a
courtesy, which might polish criticism, but should never soften it, have
done their best to add a girlish feebleness to the tottering infancy of
our literature. The evil is likely to be a growing one. As yet, the
great body of American women are a domestic race; but when a continuance
of ill-judged incitements shall have turned their hearts away from the
fireside, there are obvious circumstances which will render female pens
more numerous and more prolific than those of men, though but equally
encouraged; and (limited, of course, by the scanty support of the
public, but increasing indefinitely within those limits) the ink-stained
Amazons will expel their rivals by actual pressure, and petticoats wave
triumphantly over all the field. But, allowing that such forebodings
are slightly exaggerated, is it good for woman's self that the path of
feverish hope, of tremulous success, of bitter and ignominious
disappointment, should be left wide open to her? Is the prize worth her
having, if she win it? Fame does not increase the peculiar respect
which men pay to female excellence, and there is a delicacy (even in
rude bosoms, where few would think to find it) that perceives, or
fancies, a sort of impropriety in the display of woman's natal mind to
the gaze of the world, with indications by which its inmost secrets may
be searched out. In fine, criticism should examine with a stricter,
instead of a more indulgent eye, the merits of females at its bar,
because they are to justify themselves for an irregularity which men do
not commit in appearing there; and woman, when she feels the impulse of
genius like a command of Heaven within her, should be aware that she is
relinquishing a part of the loveliness of her sex, and obey the inward
voice with sorrowing reluctance, like the Arabian maid who bewailed the
gift of prophecy. Hinting thus imperfectly at sentiments which may be
developed on a future occasion, we proceed to consider the celebrated
subject of this sketch.
Mrs. Hutchinson was a woman of extraordinary talent and strong
imagination, whom the latter quality, following the general direction
taken by the enthusiasm of the times, prompted to stand forth as a
reformer in religion. In her native country, she had shown symptoms of
irregular and daring thought, but, chiefly by the influence of a
favorite pastor, was restrained from open indiscretion. On the removal
of this clergyman, becoming dissatisfied with the ministry under which
she lived, she was drawn in by the great tide of Puritan emigration, and
visited Massachusetts within a few years after its first settlement.
But she bore trouble in her own bosom, and could find no peace in this
chosen land. She soon began to promulgate strange and dangerous
opinions, tending, in the peculiar situation of the colony, and from the
principles which were its basis, and indispensable for its temporary
support, to eat into its very existence. We shall endeavor to give a
more practical idea of this part of her course.
It is a summer evening. The dusk has settled heavily upon the woods,
the waves, and the Trimountain peninsula, increasing that dismal aspect
of the embryo town, which was said to have drawn tears of despondency
from Mrs. Hutchinson, though she believed that her mission thither was
divine. The houses, straw thatched and lowly roofed, stand irregularly
along streets that are yet roughened by the roots of the trees, as if
the forest, departing at the approach of man, had left its reluctant
footprints behind. Most of the dwellings are lonely and silent: from a
few we may hear the reading of some sacred text, or the quiet voice of
prayer; but nearly all the sombre life of the scene is collected near
the extremity of the village. A crowd of hooded women, and of men in
steeple-hats and close-cropped hair, are assembled at the door and open
windows of a house newly built. An earnest expression glows in every
face; and some press inward, as if the bread of life were to be dealt
forth, and they feared to lose their share; while others would fain hold
them back, but enter with them, since they may not be restrained. We,
also, will go in, edging through the thronged doorway to an apartment
which occupies the whole breadth of the house. At the upper end, behind
a table, on which are placed the Scriptures and two glimmering lamps, we
see a woman, plainly attired, as befits her ripened years: her hair,
complexion, and eyes are dark, the latter somewhat dull and heavy, but
kindling up with a gradual brightness. Let us look round upon the
hearers. At her right hand his countenance suiting well with the gloomy
light which discovers it, stands Vane, the youthful governor, preferred
by a hasty judgment of the people over all the wise and hoary heads that
had preceded him to New England. In his mysterious eyes we may read a
dark enthusiasm, akin to that of the woman whose cause he has espoused,
combined with a shrewd worldly foresight, which tells him that her
doctrines will be productive of change and tumult, the elements of his
power and delight. On her left, yet slightly drawn back, so as to
evince a less decided support, is Cotton, no young and hot enthusiast,
but a mild, grave man in the decline of life, deep in all the learning
of the age, and sanctified in heart, and made venerable in feature, by
the long exercise of his holy profession. He, also, is deceived by the
strange fire now laid upon the altar; and he alone among his brethren is
excepted in the denunciation of the new apostle, as sealed and set apart
by Heaven to the work of the ministry. Others of the priesthood stand
full in front of the woman, striving to beat her down with brows of
wrinkled iron, and whispering sternly and significantly among themselves
as she unfolds her seditious doctrines, and grows warm in their support.
Foremost is Hugh Peters, full of holy wrath, and scarce containing
himself from rushing forward to convict her of damnable heresies.
There, also, is Ward, meditating a reply of empty puns, and quaint
antitheses, and tinkling jests that puzzle us with nothing but a sound.
The audience are variously affected; but none are indifferent. On the
foreheads of the aged, the mature, and strong-minded, you may generally
read steadfast disapprobation, though here and there is one whose faith
seems shaken in those whom lie had trusted for years. The females, on
the other hand, are shuddering and weeping, and at times they cast a
desolate look of fear around them; while the young men lean forward,
fiery and impatient, fit instruments for whatever rash deed may be
suggested. And what is the eloquence that gives rise to all these
passions? The woman tells then (and cites texts from the Holy Book to
prove her words) that they have put their trust in unregenerated and
uncommissioned men, and have followed them into the wilderness for
nought. Therefore their hearts are turning from those whom they had
chosen to lead them to heaven; and they feel like children who have been
enticed far from home, and see the features of their guides change all
at once, assuming a fiendish shape in some frightful solitude.
These proceedings of Mrs. Hutchinson could not long be endured by the
provincial government. The present was a most remarkable case, in which
religious freedom was wholly inconsistent with public safety, and where
the principles of an illiberal age indicated the very course which must
have been pursued by worldly policy and enlightened wisdom. Unity of
faith was the star that had guided these people over the deep; and a
diversity of sects would either have scattered them from the land to
which they had as yet so few attachments, or, perhaps, have excited a
diminutive civil war among those who had come so far to worship
together. The opposition to what may be termed the Established Church
had now lost its chief support by the removal of Vane from office, and
his departure for England; and Mr. Cotton began to have that light in
regard to his errors, which will sometimes break in upon the wisest and
most pious men, when their opinions are unhappily discordant with those
of the powers that be. A synod, the first in New England, was speedily
assembled, and pronounced its condemnation of the obnoxious doctrines.
Mrs. Hutchinson was next summoned before the supreme civil tribunal, at
which, however, the most eminent of the clergy were present, and appear
to have taken a very active part as witnesses and advisers. We shall
here resume the more picturesque style of narration.
It is a place of humble aspect where the elders of the people are met,
sitting in judgment upon the disturber of Israel. The floor of the low
and narrow hall is laid with planks hewn by the axe; the beams of the
roof still wear the rugged bark with which they grew up in the forest;
and the hearth is formed of one broad, unhammered stone, heaped with
logs that roll their blaze and smoke up a chimney of wood and clay. A
sleety shower beats fitfully against the windows, driven by the November
blast, which comes howling onward from the northern desert, the
boisterous and unwelcome herald of a New England winter. Rude benches
are arranged across the apartment, and along its sides, occupied by men
whose piety and learning might have entitled them to seats in those high
councils of the ancient church, whence opinions were sent forth to
confirm or supersede the gospel in the belief of the whole world and of
posterity. Here are collected all those blessed fathers of the land,
who rank in our veneration next to the evangelists of Holy Writ; and
here, also, are many, unpurified from the fiercest errors of the age,
and ready to propagate the religion of peace by violence. In the
highest place sits Winthrop,--a man by whom the innocent and guilty
might alike desire to be judged; the first confiding in his integrity
and wisdom, the latter hoping in his mildness, Next is Endicott, who
would stand with his drawn sword at the gate of heaven, and resist to
the death all pilgrims thither, except they travelled his own path. The
infant eyes of one in this assembly beheld the fagots blazing round the
martyrs in Bloody Mary's time: in later life he dwelt long at Leyden,
with the first who went from England for conscience' sake; and now, in
his weary age, it matters little where he lies down to die. There are
others whose hearts were smitten in the high meridian of ambitious hope,
and whose dreams still tempt them with the pomp of the Old World and the
din of its crowded cities, gleaming and echoing over the deep. In the
midst, and in the centre of all eyes, we see the woman. She stands
loftily before her judges with a determined brow; and, unknown to
herself, there is a flash of carnal pride half hidden in her eye, as she
surveys the many learned and famous men whom her doctrines have put in
fear. They question her; and her answers are ready and acute: she
reasons with them shrewdly, and brings Scripture in support of every
argument. The deepest controversialists of that scholastic day find
here a woman, whom all their trained and sharpened intellects are
inadequate to foil. But, by the excitement of the contest, her heart is
made to rise and swell within her, and she bursts forth into eloquence.
She tells them of the long unquietness which she had endured in England,
perceiving the corruption of the Church, and yearning for a purer and
more perfect light, and how, in a day of solitary prayer, that light was
given. She claims for herself the peculiar power of distinguishing
between the chosen of man, and the sealed of Heaven, and affirms that
her gifted eye can see the glory round the foreheads of saints,
sojourning in their mortal state. She declares herself commissioned to
separate the true shepherds from the false, and denounces present and
future judgments on the laud, if she be disturbed in her celestial
errand. Thus the accusations are proved from her own mouth. Her judges
hesitate; and some speak faintly in her defence; but, with a few
dissenting voices, sentence is pronounced, bidding her go out from among
them, and trouble the land no more.
Mrs. Hutchinson's adherents throughout the colony were now disarmed; and
she proceeded to Rhode Island, an accustomed refuge for the exiles of
Massachusetts in all seasons of persecution. Her enemies believed that
the anger of Heaven was following her, of which Governor Winthrop does
not disdain to record a notable instance, very interesting in a
scientific point of view, but fitter for his old and homely narrative
than for modern repetition. In a little time, also, she lost her
husband, who is mentioned in history only as attending her footsteps,
and whom we may conclude to have been (like most husbands of celebrated
women) a mere insignificant appendage of his mightier wife. She now
grew uneasy away frown the Rhode Island colonists, whose liberality
towards her, at an era when liberality was not esteemed a Christian
virtue, probably arose from a comparative insolicitude on religious
matters, more distasteful to Mrs. Hutchinson than even the
uncompromising narrowness of the Puritans. Her final movement was to
lead her family within the limits of the Dutch jurisdiction, where,
having felled the trees of a virgin soil, she became herself the virtual
head, civil and ecclesiastical, of a little colony.
Perhaps here she found the repose hitherto so vainly sought. Secluded
from all whose faith she could not govern, surrounded by the dependants
over whom she held an unlimited influence, agitated by none of the
tumultuous billows which were left swelling behind her, we may suppose
that, in the stillness of Nature, her heart was stilled. But her
impressive story was to have an awful close. Her last scene is as
difficult to be described as a shipwreck, where the shrieks of the
victims die unheard, along a desolate sea, and a shapeless mass of agony
is all that can be brought home to the imagination. The savage foe was
on the watch for blood. Sixteen persons assembled at the evening
prayer: in the deep midnight their cry rang through the forest; and
daylight dawned upon the lifeless clay of all but one. It was a
circumstance not to be unnoticed by our stern ancestors, in considering
the fate of her who had so troubled their religion, that an infant
daughter, the sole survivor amid the terrible destruction of her
mother's household, was bred in a barbarous faith, and never learned the
way to the Christian's heaven. Yet we will hope that there the mother
and child have met.