Renaissance · North America · Religion

1638

Anne Hutchinson Banished

1638

The Boston midwife and theologian Anne Hutchinson, who held weekly Bible discussions in her kitchen and questioned Puritan orthodoxy, was banished from Massachusetts as an antinomian heretic. She and her followers decamped to Rhode Island. A woman with opinions had proved too much for the Bay Colony, and her trial became an early landmark in the American struggle over religious freedom.