Tag: banishment

Roger Williams’ banishment

In Part VI of our Truth v. Myth series on Roger Williams, he is at last banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. We left Williams sentenced to banishment in October 1635; he was supposed to leave within 6 weeks, but the General Court, impressed with his willing acceptance of his fate, extended the deadline to the spring, on condition that Williams stay quiet and not “go about to draw others to his opinions.”

Knowing Williams as we do, we can’t be surprised to find out that he was unable to live up to his side of this bargain. By December reports got back to the Court that Williams had inspired a group of about 20 people to go with him to Narragansett Bay and start their own colony. This was alarming to the MBC because from there “the infection would easily spread into [our own] churches, the people being …much taken with the apprehension of his godliness.” There was only one choice left to the General Court: seize Williams and put him on a ship back to England.

This was indeed a sign of desperation on the part of New England, since Williams was bound to spread the word of his treasonous doings back in England, and bring down the displeasure of king and Parliament onto the MBC.

But it was all for nothing, because when the authorities went to Salem in January to seize him, Williams was gone. How could he have known what was going to happen? Who tipped him off? None other than the most orthodox man in MBC, a man who concurred in the judgement of banishment—John Winthrop. Winthrop does not say anything about this in any of his known papers, but he was the one who warned Williams to leave before he was shipped back to a hostile England. We know this because WIlliams wrote a letter in 1670, long after the events, saying,

“When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land and wife and children, (in the midst of a New England winter, now about thirty-five years past), at Salem, that ever honored Governor, Mr. Winthrop, privately wrote to me to steer my course to Narragansett Bay and Indians, for many high and heavenly and public ends, encouraging me, from the freeness of the place from any English claims or patents. I took his prudent motion as a hint and voice from God, and waving all other thoughts and motions, I steered my course from Salem, though in winter snow, which I feel yet, unto these parts.”

Fleeing alone, Williams was not a threat, and the MBC left him alone. Williams wrote later that he had nearly died wandering in the winter snows, until he was found by a Narragansett man who greeted him with “What cheer, netop?” (a nice mixture of Narragansett and English).  Helped by the Narragansetts to find a good place to settle, Williams survived. He eventually brought his wife and children down to his outpost, and they lived very much alone there.

During this time, Williams wrote frequently to Winthrop. It is still touching to see the kindness and broad-mindedness of the governor, who, while abhorring Williams’ views, never lost sight of or respect for the man’s goodness and honesty. Winthrop asked him in October 1636 if he really believed everyone else in the MBC was fallen away, and whether he was not grieved to have made so many people so unhappy. Williams wrote back that he did still believe this, and that he was not grieved, and that Winthrop should follow his example and join him in total isolation: “Abstract yourself with a holy violence from the Dung heap of this Earth.”

Strong language. Here Williams has come full circle in his separatism. Now out of the entire world, only he, his wife, and potentially Winthrop, were holy enough to be acceptable company. Everyone else on the earth was human excrement before God—and before Williams. Winthrop’s argument that there is no escape from the human condition of imperfection, and that imperfection must be addressed lovingly, fell on deaf ears.

There was a small community that joined Williams in Narragansett territory, and they created a small church, but even this dedicated group was not good enough. Williams stopped the practice of infant baptism, since the babies had not proven their sanctity, and began to wonder aloud if any church could be truly holy without God returning through the Apocalypse and cleansing the world. The low point was when he decided that only he and his wife were fit for Communion. The only possible next step would be to find himself completely alone in the world, with not even his wife fit to accompany him.

Next time: Williams as we know, remember, and love him

Roger Williams makes trouble in Salem—again

Part V of the Truth v. Myth series on Roger Williams finds him once again before the General Court, this time in April 1635. His unique brand of Separatism was causing him to deny more and more people the benefit of a doubt in a few ways: when the colony decided all inhabitants who were not freemen should take an oath to support the colony and its government, Williams complained (to all who would hear him) that since oaths were taken before God,  if unregenerate (unsaved) men took the oath along with the godly, those godly men would as a result “have communion” with the wicked and therefore be taking God’s name in vain. He also stated that a godly man should not stoop to pray with the ungodly, even if that meant his own wife and children.

Williams was able to persuade the church-goers of Salem in these cases, again because of his charisma and because he himself seemed to be so undoubtedly good. Such a godly man could not be wrong. When the minister at Salem died, Williams was chosen by the congregation to take his place.

Not long after, in July 1635, he was summoned again to the General Court, but this time it was different. As a legally chosen minister of the colony, Williams could not be forced to change his views. In Puritan New England, the independence of the individual congregation was paramount—their faith was called Congregationalism. No one—not the government, not other ministers—had control over a church, or the right to interfere with its decisions. Only a church’s congregation could rebuke or remove its minister. The General Court could not force Williams to leave the pulpit in Salem.

The Court could, however, take the advice of other ministers, and in this case a group of them concluded that Williams was leading Salem to heresy and ought to be removed. To implement this advice, the Court told Salem that it would not grant its petition to claim land in nearby Marblehead if Williams was not dismissed. Salem’s church immediately wrote furious letters to the other churches in the colony, asking for their help in withstanding this clear breach of congregational independence.

This could have become a serious crisis for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. If the churches had united to challenge the government, the whole basis of the colony—a political unit supporting a religious society that agreed to be governed by civil law—would have collapsed. Churches would most certainly have been divided over the issue, some feeling that defying the civil authorities was justified, others feeling it was not. It’s important to remember that at this moment, MBC was fighting with the English government to keep its charter (the legal document allowing it to govern itself independently), and expecting a flotilla of English warships in the harbor at any moment. Everything seemed to be at stake.

So the ministers obfuscated. The ministers who had delivered the opinion against Williams to the court received the letters from Salem and simply pocketed them, not telling their congregations about them.

Williams figured this out and in his anger he finally went too far even for Salem. He claimed publicly that the churches of Massachusetts, by helping the government to oppress the Salem church, were no longer pure. If Salem did not separate from the other churches, Williams would leave its pulpit.

Salem could not do it. To withdraw itself from the help, fellowship, and support not only of the government of the colony but of all other churches and towns in the MBC was too much. The people of Salem did not want to separate from the rest of the world and go it completely alone, having spiritual and earthly communion with no one but themselves. They refused.

Williams was called for the last time to the Court in October 1635, where he gladly accepted the charges of denying the court’s authority and writing seditious letters calling for rebellion against the government. He was sentenced to banishment, and told to leave the colony within six weeks.

Williams resigned as minister when he returned to Salem, and because he did not try to whip up support against his banishment, and in fact seemed to accept it happily, the Court changed its ruling to say he could wait to leave until the next spring, rather than set out in late fall. The one condition was that Williams stop spreading his seditious opinions. That, of course, was impossible.

Next time: Williams makes a narrow escape

The trial of Anne Hutchinson

Part 3 of our series on Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson focuses on her fall. After Hutchinson’s brother-in-law Wheelwright’s sermon at the Boston church in January 1637, in which he said all those under the covenant of works were the “great enemies of Christ” and ought to be “killed with the word of the Lord,” Wheelwright was found guilty of sedition (May 1637). Hutchinson’s followers rallied to Wheelwright’s cause, signing a petition in his favor. This petition was in line with the nature of their beliefs: it claimed Wheelwright had done nothing wrong; that anything he said in that sermon was the voice of the Holy Spirit that lived within him; recalled that all the great saints had been wrongly attacked by human courts; and ended with a threat—“we beseech you to consider the danger of meddling against the prophets of God… if you hurt any of his members… it were better that a millstone were hanged about your necks, and that you were cast into the sea…”.

The Court allowed the petition to be read, then proceeded to the charges against Wheelwright, which were slandering the magistrates, ministers, and church members of the colony by saying they were Antichrists under a covenant of works; and for causing civil disturbance with his preaching. Wheelwright, who showed up to the Court over an hour late, denied he had ever said anyone was an enemy of Christ, and denied that his preaching was a source of the accusations, political division, and physical rioting taking place in Boston. The Court presented him with evidence to the contrary, then sentenced him to banishment for creating civil unrest (“troubles of the civil state”).

After this, nine of Hutchinson’s and Wheelwright’s followers were charged with civil disturbance, and all were fined and disenfranchised; one was also banished. Then Anne Hutchinson was tried.

Much is made of this because Hutchinson was a woman. But women appeared in Puritan courts constantly, as plaintiffs and defendants, and were given equal treatment. And if we read the court transcripts we see that Hutchinson was accused of exactly the same things as the men—slandering the ministers. Yes, her weekly meetings were also charged against her, but not because women couldn’t have meetings. The charges were that a) she attracted hundreds of people, which created civil unrest by fueling mobs; b) she did not use her meetings to parse sermons but to attack ministers and others; and c) that she took it upon herself to instruct men of higher rank than herself. The last point is the only one that we can describe as sexist. Otherwise, Hutchinson received the same chance to speak for and defend herself against the charges, to see evidence, and to repent—all those on trial were given the chance to recant, and one of the nine men originally sentenced to banishment had his sentence reduced when he apologized for showing contempt for the court.

Over two days, November 2-3, Hutchinson was tried. She was a very intelligent person who handled her defense well, but after lengthy questioning she was accused in court by ministers who had met with her in the spring of slandering them to their faces. She denied this charge, and called on John Cotton, the one minister she had not slandered, to testify on her behalf.  He hesitated. Cotton declared that “he was much grieved that she should make such comparison between him and his brethren, but yet he took her meaning to be only of a gradual difference”. That is, perhaps what Hutchinson had meant to say was that although the other ministers weren’t as good as him, they weren’t damned. But then Cotton said that since he did not remember everything that was said, he would take the word of the other ministers who remembered Hutchinson saying they were under a covenant of works. Perhaps Cotton trembled to commit perjury in court. Maybe he could not look at the faces of the ministers all around him and claim that they had lied. For whatever reason, Cotton validated the testimony of the other ministers, albeit as weakly as he possibly could, and did what he could to shield Hutchinson.

Hutchinson erupted in fury, demanding again that the ministers be forced to swear an oath that they were telling the truth. “Whereupon the court being weary of the clamor, and that all mouths might be stopped, required three of the ministers to take an oath, and thereupon they confirmed their former testimony.”

Seeing all hope of human help dissolving, Hutchinson began talking about how God had revealed himself to her, “and made her know what she had to do”. Winthrop, “perceiving whereabout she went, interrupted her, and would have kept her to the matter in hand, but seeing her very unwilling to be taken off, he permitted her to proceed.” The last thing Winthrop wanted was to give a soapbox to this charismatic woman. He saw that the Court was at last making headway on the charge of slandering the ministers, and wanted to keep that “matter in hand” now that there was sworn testimony that Hutchinson had committed sedition. We will never know what she did or said to make it clear to him that she was “very unwilling to be taken off”, but Hutchinson succeeded in being allowed to make her statement, and it is here that she condemned herself to banishment.

She began to preach her doctrine in the court, describing “the manner of God’s dealing with her, and how he revealed himself to her, and made her know what she had to do.” Hutchinson said she fought against the realization that all ministers were hypocrites for a full year before God

“…let me see how I did oppose Christ Jesus… and showed me the atheism of my own heart, and how I did turn in upon a covenant of works and oppose Christ Jesus; from which time the Lord did discover to me all sorts of ministers, and how they taught, and to know what voice I heard… and thenceforth I was the more careful whom I heard, for after our teacher Mr. Cotton and my brother Wheelwright were put down, there was none in England that I durst hear… [when they left for America, she followed, although] “it was revealed to me… that there I should be persecuted and suffer much trouble.” [But God revealed another scripture]: “Fear not Jacob my servant, for I am with thee, I will make a full end of all the Nations… then the Lord did reveal himself to me, sitting upon a throne of justice, and all the world appearing before him, and though I must come to New England, yet I must not fear or be dismayed… The Lord spake this to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people…”

Here Hutchinson is making two claims: first, that God revealed himself to her and therefore she is among the saved; second, that God showed her the whole world subjected to his justice, including New England, which God counted among the damned, and therefore she “should not walk in the way of [that] people.” Both claims are explosive. She went on to compare herself to Daniel in the lions’ den, and ended with a direct threat to the colony:

“…therefore take heed what ye go about to do unto me, for you have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm, for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah my savior, I am at his appointment, the bounds of my habitation are cast in heaven, no further do I esteem of any mortal man, than creatures in his hand, I fear none but the great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of your hands, therefore take heed how you proceed against me; for I know that for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity, and this whole state.”

In this threat the magistrates heard the original of all the threats the Antinomians had previously made against them, including the petition presented before Wheelwright’s sentencing just days before.  Hutchinson’s speech damned her in several ways, civil and religious: it threatened violence against the state; it claimed direct revelation from God; it slandered the ministers; and it stated that Hutchinson was above human law. Any one of these claims would have justified banishment; put together, they shocked the magistrates and ministers who heard them deeply.

This was heresy and treason, a rejection of Puritan religion and a threat to the civil state, and easily merited banishment, the sentence she received. Her followers in Boston tried to save her, saying that she must have been tricked by the judges into making a statement she didn’t really believe. But when they met with her, Hutchinson reaffirmed her heresy, and made even bolder statements than before. Reluctantly, her church let her go.

Winthrop stayed the sentence of banishment that November because Hutchinson was pregnant. She did not leave Boston until March. Anne Hutchinson went to Rhode Island, where she managed to alienate even Roger Williams, and then to Long Island, where she died in an attack by Native Americans in 1643.

The judges in Hutchinson’s trial were tough, and they were hard on her. No quarter was given her for being a woman. They treated her as they would any heretic. But I think it’s hard to say she was treated unfairly. She got the same treatment as the men who came before her, and the same chance to lighten her sentence. She refused to recant, and expressed scorn for those who tried to reason with her both after her trial and months later, during her banishment, when a group was sent down to meet with her and see if she could be brought back into the fold.

Hutchinson has gone down in history as a demure maiden with downcast eyes facing mean, angry old Puritan men in black coats. Even the most adoring of Winthrop biographers (and one who is a reliable historian), Edmund Morgan, castigates Winthrop for “persecuting” a brave and wonderful woman, and calls the trial he presided over as  “the least attractive” of Winthrop’s life.

But we can find little to admire in a person who wanted to damn the world, believed she was God, and nurtured dissension and mistrust amongst her fellows. The fact that she was a woman should not sway the rational historian. If it had been only Wheelwright and the other nine men, I doubt the whole incident of Antinomian dispute in 1636-37 would be known outside the circle of Puritan historians. Anne Hutchinson was a negative figure in American history who received a fair trial and accepted her sentence, gladly removing herself from people she saw as instruments of Satan. Any positive view of her role in our founding is hard to come by.

Anne Hutchinson: victim or villain?

Welcome to part 2 of my Truth v. Myth series on Anne Hutchinson. We left off wondering how such a heretical Puritan could have gained such a following in Boston in 1635.

One reason was that Puritans, as Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop realized, were always on the verge of deciding the world was too sinful, and withdrawing from it to maintain their own purity and safety. Winthrop recognized this as an insult and a danger. An insult because it left the unsaved to their doom, and a danger because once people decide they must withdraw from the world, they go quickly down an endless spiral, rejecting more and more people as unfit, until they are completely isolated and literally alone.

Winthrop, like all good Puritans, knew that the righteous had a responsibility to live in the world and help other people achieve righteousness (if not salvation; only God could give that). He was constantly talking extremists down from the ledge of withdrawal.

Hutchinson’s beliefs were a form of that dangerous withdrawal. Hutchinson not only believed that she knew she was saved (God had told her), but that as a saved person, she was Christ himelf, above the law. Her task was not to help others but to judge them, and “deal with them” as antichrists. She decided and stated publicly that only the ministers John Cotton and John Wheelwright (her brother-in-law) were truly saved, and all the rest of the Puritan ministers in Boston were fallen sinners, not fit to preach. Hutchinson granted salvation to those who attended her meetings, and denied it to everyone else in the world.

Many Puritans gravitated to this withdrawal from the world, and were eager to achieve salvation by affiliation with Hutchinson. It was exactly the kind of withdrawal into a small circle of righteousness that damned the rest of the world that Winthrop knew was not only morally wrong, but could divide and seriously harm the colony.

For a year Hutchinson continued to grow in power. The new governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, young Henry Vane, joined her group and attended the weekly spiritual meetings in her home. The powerful Puritan church in Boston lost many members to Hutchinson when she denounced its pastor, John Wilson, as an unfit sinner. But in October 1636, when John Wheelwright was proposed to take Wilson’s place, the remaining church members rallied against him, sensing a dangerous takeover in the works. In December 1636, John Cotton and other Massachusetts ministers met with Hutchinson to try to get her to moderate her opinions. Cotton was not only the most powerful and revered minister in New England, but a personal hero of Hutchinson’s. She had followed him to New England when he was forced to flee England.

The meeting was standard Puritan procedure: if a person veered into heresy, her pastor was to meet with her, accompanied by the deacons of her church, to talk with her and help her back to the right path. If this failed, the erring person’s church would discuss the matter, and if all efforts at outreach failed, the person might be forced out of that congregation. At all times the person had the right, even the obligation, of explaining her views and defending herself. Often, the vote to force her out of the congregation had to be unanimous; if not, she stayed.

The ministerial group found Hutchinson unmoved by their counsels. Even as her husband was voted out of the General Court (the legislative and judicial body of the colony), Hutchinson’s power grew in Boston. In a sermon in January 1637, Wheelwright stated that everyone under a covenant of works (and that would be just about everyone) was a “great enemy of Christ,” who must be eliminated: “We must lay load upon them, we must kill them with the word of God.” (Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, p. 134)

Here was withdrawal from and damnation of the world indeed. It was Puritanism going off the rails, and it would lead to the banishment of those who fostered it.

Next up in Part 3: The somehow-notorious trial of Anne Hutchinson