Anne Hutchinson
participant in the Antinomian Controversy
Anne Hutchinson (née Marbury; July 1591 – August 1643) was an English-born religious figure who was an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the nascent Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious formal declarations were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened the Puritan religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters. Five years after her banishment, she and several members of her family and household were killed in a massacre committed by a tribe in New Netherland, where the household had moved.
Hutchinson was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Francis Marbury, an Anglican cleric and school teacher who gave her a far better education than most other girls received. She lived in London as a young adult, and there married a friend from home, William Hutchinson. The couple moved back to Alford where they began following the preacher John Cotton in the nearby port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Cotton was compelled to emigrate in 1633, and the Hutchinsons followed a year later with their 15 children and soon became well established in the growing settlement of Boston in New England. Soon she was hosting women at her house weekly, providing commentary on recent sermons. These meetings became so popular that she began offering meetings for men as well, including the young governor of the colony, Henry Vane the Younger.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anne Hutchinson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.