"Then you say that you can commit no sin?"
"If my heart is right, I can not sin."
"Is your heart right?"
"I am trying to make it so."
"Then you can commit any act you wish?"
"Whatever I wish to do will be right, if my heart is right."
"But suppose, now--" and here these clergymen asked questions which no
gentleman ever asks a lady.
These men had a fine faculty for misunderstanding, misinterpreting,
and misrepresenting other people's thoughts.
John Cotton tried to pour oil on the troubled waters by explaining
that the idea of a Covenant of Grace was general, and to make it
specific was unjust and unreasonable. Then they turned on Cotton and
said, "So, you are one of them?"
Anne Hutchinson was ordered not to speak in public.
She still held meetings at her own house, and claimed she had the
right to ask her friends to her home and there to talk to them.
She it was who instituted the Boston Thursday Lecture, which was taken
up by John Cotton and carried by an apostolic succession to the
crowning days of its success, when Adirondack Murray reigned supreme.
Mrs. Hutchinson spoke to all the women the house would hold. The
Colony was divided into two parts: those who believed in a Covenant of
Grace and those who held to a Covenant of Works.
John Cotton seemed to be the only clergyman of the eight who realized
that both sides were right. Anne Hutchinson quoted him, told what he
had said in England, as well as here--and then John Cotton had to
defend himself. He did it by criticizing her, and then by accusing her
of taking his words too literally. He feared the mob.
The breach widened--he denounced her. Winthrop was against her, and
Cotton saw defeat for himself if he longer stood by her. She was a
good woman, but she must be suppressed for the good of the Colony.
With the consent of Cotton, and Wilson, his colleague, these two men,
being joint ministers to the Boston church, made formal charges of
heresy against her.
Sir Henry Vane, a youth of twenty-four, noble both by birth and by
nature, was elected Governor of the Colony. He sided with Mrs.
Hutchinson, and sought to bring commonsense to bear and stem the tide
of fanaticism. They turned on him, and his downfall was identical with
hers, although he was to return to England and make his own way to
success: to love Peg Woffington and elbow his way to place and power,
and also to London Tower, and lay his head upon the block in the
interests of human rights.
Mrs. Hutchinson was tried by an ecclesiastic court and found guilty.
In the trial, which covered several months, Mrs. Hutchinson defended
herself at great length and with much skill; but what the clergymen
demanded was an absolute retraction, and a promise that she would no
longer usurp their special function of giving public instruction.
All this time the Colony was rent by schism. Up at Salem was a Baptist
preacher by the name of Roger Williams, who was much in sympathy with
Mrs. Hutchinson, personally, although not adopting all of her ideas.
He thought that in view of the great usefulness of Mrs. Hutchinson as
a nurse and neighbor, she should be allowed to speak when she chose
and say what she wished, "because if it be a lie, it will die; and if
it be truth, we ought to know it." Roger Williams would have done well
to have kept a civil tongue in his head. There was a rod in pickle for
him, too, and his words were duly noted and recorded by witnesses.
Then there was Mary Dyer, wife of William Dyer, who came to Boston in
Sixteen Hundred Thirty-five, when the Hutchinson trouble was beginning
to brew. Mary Dyer is described by John Winthrop as "a comely person
of ready tongue, somewhat given to frivolity." But the years were to
subdue her. She became much attached to Mrs. Hutchinson, and whenever
Mrs. Hutchinson spoke in public Mrs. Dyer was always near at hand to
lend her support. In the journal of Winthrop there are various
references to Mrs. Dyer. The man was interested in her, but one of
these references reflects most seriously on the mental processes of
this excellent man. When the charges of heresy were brought against
Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Dyer stood by her boldly, and was threatened by
the clergymen with similar proceedings. Winthrop says Mrs. Dyer was so
wrought upon by the excitement that she was taken with premature
childbirth. She was attended by Mrs. Hutchinson, and the child, "being
not human," was despatched. This horrible story was related throughout
the Colony, and both women were regarded as being in league with the
devil. School-children used to run and hide when they saw Mrs. Dyer
coming. A little later the Reverend Cotton Mather was to cite the case
of Mary Dyer as precedent for his pet belief in witchcraft.
Mrs. Hutchinson was found guilty and expelled from the church. She was
then again tried by the General Court, wherein all of her judges in
the Ecclesiastic Court also sat. After a long, laborious and insulting
trial, with no one but herself to raise a voice in her defense, pitted
against the eight clergymen, she ably defended her cause and actually
put them all to rout--an unforgivable thing, and an error in judgment
on her part.
There is much literature surrounding the case, and one of the
ministers, Thomas Welde, wrote a pamphlet explaining his part in it,
quite forgetful of the fact that explanations never explain. The more
one reads of Welde, the greater is his admiration for Mrs. Hutchinson.
Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, the great-grandson of Anne
Hutchinson, edited the journal of Winthrop, and gives a remarkably
unprejudiced account of the sufferings of his great maternal ancestor.
Being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mrs. Hutchinson
found refuge in Rhode Island, where she was welcomed by Roger
Williams, the first person, I believe, who lifted up his voice for
free speech in America. Mrs. Hutchinson was followed by her own family
and eighteen persons from Boston who sympathized with her. Included in
the party was Mary Dyer.
At Providence, Mrs. Hutchinson drew around her a goodly number of
people, including Quakers and Baptists, who listened to her discourses
with interest.
The ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony evidently felt that they
had made a mistake, for they got together and delegated three of their
number to go down to Providence and acquaint the renegades with the
news that if they would recant all belief in a Covenant of Grace, they
could return. Mrs. Hutchinson met the delegates with dignity and
kindness. The conference lasted for two days, and the committee
returned reporting the matter hopeless.
There were several desertions from Boston by those who sympathized
with Mrs. Hutchinson, and some of those people Mrs. Hutchinson
prevailed upon to go back. There were threats that the Massachusetts
people were coming down to capture them all by force. This so preyed
upon the Hutchinsons, who had suffered severely, that they packed
their now scanty goods upon a raft, and with improvised sails headed
for the Dutch settlement of Manhattan.
They were kindly received and given title to a tract of land on Long
Island, near Hell Gate. There, in a little clearing, on the water's
edge, they began to build a house. Ere the roof was on they were
attacked by Indians, who evidently mistook them for Dutch, and all
were massacred.
So died Anne Hutchinson.
* * * * *
Anne Hutchinson was mourned by Mary Dyer as a sister, and she preached
a funeral sermon at Providence in eulogy of her. Mrs. Dyer also went
back to Boston and made an address in praise of Anne Hutchinson on
Boston Common, to the great scandal of the community. Mrs. Dyer had
now become a Quaker, principally because Quakers had no paid
priesthood and allowed women who heard the Voice to preach.
Mary Dyer heard the Voice and preached. Her attention was called to
the law, which in Boston provided that Quakers and Jews should have
their ears cut off and their tongues bored.
She continued to preach, and was banished.
She came back, and was found standing in front of the jail talking
through the bars to two Quakers, Robinson and Stevenson, who were
confined there awaiting sentence. She had brought them food, and was
exhorting them to be of good-cheer. She was locked up, and asked to
recant. She acknowledged she was a Quaker, and not in sympathy with
magistracy.
She was sentenced by Governor Endicott, on her own confession, with
having a contempt for authority, and ordered to be hanged. The day
came and she was led forth, walking hand in hand with her two guilty
Quaker brothers.
The scaffold was on Boston Common, on the little hill about where the
band-stand is at the present day.
Mrs. Dyer stood and watched them hang her friends, one at a time. As
they were swung off into space she called to them to hold fast to the
truth, "for Christ is with us!" Whenever she spoke or sang, the drums
that were standing in front and back of her were ordered to beat, so
as to drown her voice.
After the bodies of her friends had dangled half an hour they were cut
down.
It was then her turn. She ascended the scaffold, refusing the help of
the Reverend Mr. Wilson. He followed her and bound his handkerchief
over her eyes, a guard in the meantime tying her hands and feet with
rawhide.
"Do you renounce the Quakers?"
"Never, praise God, His son Jesus Christ, and Anne Hutchinson, His
handmaiden--we live by truth!".
"A reprieve! a reprieve!!" some one shouted. And it was so--Governor
Endicott had ordered that this woman be banished, not hanged, unless
she again came back to Boston. It was all an arranged trick to
frighten the woman thoroughly.
Wilson removed the handkerchief from her eyes. They unbound her feet,
and the thongs that held her hands were loosed. She looked down below
at the bodies of Robinson and Stevenson lying dead on the grass. She
asked that the sentence upon her be carried out. But not so: she was
led by guards fifteen miles out into the forest and there liberated.
In a few months she was back in Boston, to see her two grown-up sons,
and also to bear witness to the "Inner Light."
Being brought before Governor Endicott, she was asked, "Are you the
same Mary Dyer that was here before?"
"I am the same Mary Dyer."
"Do you know you are under sentence of death?"
"I do, and I came back to remind you of the unrighteousness of your
laws, and to warn you to repent!"
"Are you still a Quaker?"
"I am still reproachfully so called."
"Tomorrow at nine o'clock I order that you shall be hanged."
"This sounds like something you said before!"
"Lead her away--away, I say!"
At nine the next morning a vast crowd covered the Common, the shops
and stores being closed, by order, for a holiday.
Mr. Wilson again attended the culprit. "Mary Dyer, Mary Dyer!" he
called in a loud voice as they stood together on the scaffold. "Mary
Dyer, repent, oh, repent, and renounce your heresies!"
And Mary Dyer answered, "Nay, man; I am not now to repent, knowing
nothing to repent of!"
"Shall I have the men of God pray for you?"