Anne Marbury was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, a daughter of Francis Marbury and
Bridget Dryden. Her family history shows that she descended from Charlemagne
and Alfred the Great on her father’s side and King Edward I of England on her
mother’s side. She was baptized in Alford on July 20, 1591.
Anne’s father was a minister for
the Anglican Church in London who leaned strongly toward Puritan thinking. Because of his strong feelings that the
clergy should be well educated, he clashed with his superiors. He repeatedly challenged the Anglican
authorities and was censured and imprisoned for several years before Anne was
born. He was given a public trial in
1578. While under house arrest, he wrote
a transcript of his trial from memory; later he used his transcript to educate
and amuse his children. He spent two
years in the Marshalsea Prison located across the Thames River from
London. He was released in 1580 when he
was 25 years old because he was “considered sufficiently reformed to preach and
teach.” He moved his family to Alford, a
market town located 140 miles north of London.
Anne became well educated because
she was taught at home by her school teacher father. The family moved to London in 1605 when Anne
was 14. Her father passed away when she
was 19. When she was 21 years old and a
young adult in London, she married William Hutchinson, an old friend from her
home town, in St. Mary Woolnoth Church in London on August 9, 1612. The couple soon returned to their hometown of
Alford. They eventually became parents
of 15 children. Fourteen of the children
were born and baptized in Alford. Eleven
of the fourteen lived to sail to New England.
The last child was baptized in Boston, Massachusetts.
In Alford the couple became
followers of John Cotton, a dynamic preacher who was forced to emigrate in
1633. William and Anne, along their 11 living
children, also immigrated to America and settled in Boston, New England, where
she became a midwife. She also shared
her spiritual thinking with anyone who would listen in her home. Her popularity and charisma drew enough
people to her “the Puritans’ religious experiment in New England” was “threatened.” She believed in a “covenant of grace” while
most of the local ministers – besides Cotton and husband’s brother-in-law –
preached a “covenant of works.”
Several ministers became upset
with Anne’s teachings, and she became an important participant in the
Antinomian Controversy. Anne was tried,
convicted, and banished from the colony in 1637. In March 1638 she was excommunicated from the
church. Anne and many of her supporters
moved to the Colony of Rhode Island where they established the settlement of
Portsmouth with encouragement from Providence founder, Roger Williams. After William Hutchinson died a few years
later, Anne fled with her younger children to the area that later became The
Bronx in New York City.
In August 1643, Anne and “all
but one of the 16 members of her household were massacred during an attack of
the native Siwanoy. Anne’s nine-year-old
daughter, Susanna, was the only survivor of the attack, and she was taken captive.” She lived with the natives for several years
until she was rescued and cared for by family members in Boston.
Anne is a “key figure in the
development of religious freedom in England’s American colonies and the history
of women in ministry. She challenged the
authority of the ministers, exposing the subordination of women in the culture
of colonial Massachusetts. She is
honoured by Massachusetts with a State House monument calling her a `courageous
exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.’ She has been called the most famous, or
infamous, English woman in colonial American history.”
No comments:
Post a Comment