This
biography of Anne Hutchison focuses on her trial for heresy and sedition. She
was a forty-six-year- midwife
and pregnant with her 16th child. In 1637, she was tried before
judges of the Massachusetts General Court.
At that
time, women could not vote or hold public office. They also could not be
ministers, and Anne held meetings at her home in which she dared to teach both
women and men her interpretation of the scriptures. In that Puritan society,
the judges considered her a threat to the stability and well-being of the
colony. They excommunicated and banished her for behaving in a manner “not
comely for her sex.”
Many
historians consider her quest, and that of her followers, at the core of the origins of our modern concepts of religious freedom, equal
rights, and free speech.
346 pages
