Tiffany Meany

Essay-Colonial Person

American History

Ms.Thelie

Anne Marbury-Hutchinson
Anne Marbury was born on July 20, 1591. She was baptized

in Alford, Lincolnshire, England. Anne’s father, Reverend Francis

Marbury, was a deacon at Christ Church, Cambridge. He was

imprisoned for preaching against the incompetence of English

ministers, also he was imprisoned for a year for his outspoken

criticism of certain Church of England ministers. Anne was

educated at home and read many of her father’s religion and

theology books. She grew up during the persecution of Catholics

and Separatists under Queen Elizabeth and King James the first.

When Anne was 21, she was courted by William Hutchinson

who was a London merchant. They married on August 9, 1612 in

London. She began to raise their eventual 15 children.

Anne loved the preaching and teachings of John Cotton, a

Puritan minister who left England for America. In 1634 like the
thousands of others, Anne and her family left England and went to

New England to practice Puritanism freely. They came to America

with Reverend John Lothrop’s group on the ship Griffin.

There was an oppressive religious climate in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritan Church dominated Boston.

The Puritans believed the bible is a source of law. Ministers

emphasized everyone’s pious duty to pray, fast and discipline

oneself as the colony strengthened.

Anne was a trusted mid-wife, house wife and a mother that

lived in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Charisma, gentle nature, and

exceptional powers of mind are great traits of her, traits of a

leader. She started a women’s group that discussed sermons and

met weekly at her home. Originally they discussed the previous

Sunday’s sermon. It wasn’t long before Anne started telling about

her own beliefs. She talked of her many theological opinions

emphasizing the individual’s intuition over the observance of

beliefs and a means of reaching God. Anne denied that conformity

with the religious laws were a sign of godliness and insisted that

true godliness came from inner experience of the Holy Spirit. She
had an idea of salvation by works or deeds, she believed in

salvation by grace and therefore that one could not prepare to be

saved.

At first, most of those who gathered in her house in Boston

were women, but in later years as the groups got larger men also

came. Eventually many men came and among them were

ministers and magistrates, and Sir Henry Vane who became

governor of the colony in 1636. Although Anne’s gatherings were

just intellectual conversations, woman enjoyed them because it

was a subject they were never included in. Soon Anne’s

meeting’s turned into heated discussions about church and state.

Appearing to destroy the need for the externals of

institutionalized belief and law, her teachings were considered an

“attack on the rigid moral and legal codes of the Puritans” of New

England, as well as the “authority of the Massachusetts clergy.”

She caused a great political controversy in the colony because of

this.
 Anne had the support of Governor Vane and John Cotton,

and tried to have her brother in law, John Wheelwright, as a

minister of the Boston church.