Mrs. Hutchinson passed next winter accordingly under the watch and ward of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John Cotton, who had been her friend, turning against her.
Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs. Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded theology instead of law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, "had broken no law, either of God or of man."
Banishment was the sentence pronounced, and after the church which had so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did also many others whose opinions had brought them under the censure of the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far from being of their opinion, he accounted his wife "a dear saint and servant of God."
The rest of Mrs. Hutchinson's story is soon told. Upon the death of her husband, which occurred five years after the banishment, she went with her family into the Dutch territory of New Netherlands, settling near what is now New Rochelle. And scarcely had she become established in this place when her house was suddenly assaulted by hostile Indians, who, in their revengeful fury, murdered the whole family, excepting only one daughter, who was carried away into captivity. Thus in the tragedy of an Indian massacre was quenched the light of the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.
Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson ("Biographical Sketches"), humourously remarked, Seer that he was: "There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings of the gentler sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too grievous for our fathers."
Fortunately, we of to-day have learned to take our clubwomen less tragically than Winthrop was able to do.
IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES
