Anne Hutchinson: Jezebel Of New Jerusalem

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Anne Hutchinson: Jezebel of New Jerusalem


Anne Hutchinson was called many things after she started a new life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Jezebel, dissenter, witch, and antichrist are just a few. Anne was labeled an enemy of the state because she was a woman who sat in her husband’s chair and shared her views of scripture with others. Along with the negative names she was called, there was also American visionary, pioneer for religious freedom, wife, mother, and devoute Christian.(1)
Anne Hutchinson was born to Francis and Bridget Marbury in July of 1591 in Alford, Lincolnshire, England. Francis Marbury was a deacon at Christ Church in Cambridge. He believed that most of the ministers in the Church of England had not accessed their positions through proper training, but for political reasons. Frances so openly deplored the incompetent clergy that he was arrested and jailed for a year.(2) Eventually, Anne’s father did restrain his verbal attacks on the Church of England , choosing conformity with an imperfect church over constant arrests and inquisitions. If this rebellious trait left him in his later years, it settled on his daughter Anne.

1. LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel.
New York: HarperCollins. 2004. p. xvi.

2. The Biography of Anne Hutchinson.
http//:www.annehutchinson.com

At twenty-one, Anne Marbury married Will Hutchinson and started a family with him in Alford. There, she took the role of housewife and mother. Her family began to follow the sermons of John Cotton, a protestant minister whose teachings reminded her of those of her father, but were now more commonly accepted. The Reverend John Cotton of Boston, England, attained a seventeenth century form of celebrity, gaining renown for his twenty year service as England’s predominant Puritan preacher and intellectual. Some parishioners complained of wanting to wink or nod during the vicar’s eternal sermons, which were normally followed by ...