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Anne Hutchinson

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia | Date: 2007

[orig. Anne Marbury] (baptized July 20, 1591, Alford, Lincolnshire, Eng.—died August or September 1643, Pelham Bay, N.Y.) Anglo-American religious leader. In 1612 she married William Hutchinson, and they followed John Cotton to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. She organized weekly meetings of Boston women to discuss recent sermons and to express their own theological views. Before long, ministers and magistrates were attracted to her sessions, at which she criticized the narrow Puritan orthodoxy and espoused a “covenant of grace.” Her opponents accused her of believing that God's grace had freed Christians from the need to observe established moral precepts. Tried for “traducing the ministers,” she was sentenced to banishment; refusing to recant, she was excommunicated. In 1638 she and her husband established a colony at Aquidneck Island, which became part of Rhode Island.

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