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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2010
Currently two competing models exist side-by-side to explain the “antinomian” or “free grace” controversy, in which Anne Hutchinson and her theology are said to have played a key role. The differences in these narratives appear to require a return to the sources and a careful examination of Hutchinson's own statements—as far as they can be reconstructed—in the context of her first interrogation by a group of clergymen in the autumn of 1636. Since one of the narratives casts doubt on John Winthrop's assertions of her manifest unorthodoxy at that time, a central question will be whether the views she expressed then deviated significantly from the mainstream of theology espoused by godly contemporaries in Britain and if so, in what particulars. Hutchinson's remarks at the outset of the controversy could then serve as a baseline in an investigation of how the dispute escalated and evolved over the following months.
1 Hall, David D., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968; 2d ed. Durham, N.C.: Duke University PressGoogle Scholar, 1990. Citations and pages references follow the second edition). See also The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 (ed. Dunn, Richard S., Savage, James, and Yeandle, Laetitia; Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
2 Winship, Michael, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Bremer, Francis J., John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Como, David, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. In the preface to the second edition of his collection of documents related to the controversy, Hall observes that “throughout these documents we must beware of rhetorical excess—and perhaps of distortion…. Partisan of one side in the controversy, Winthrop may have shaped his narrative accordingly” (Antinomian Controversy, xvi–xvii). Knight's, JaniceOrthodoxies in Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994Google Scholar) may be regarded as a first step in this shift of viewpoint, as she argues that John Cotton's preaching and doctrine need not necessarily be viewed as “unorthodox.”
3 Winship, Making Heretics, 7, 9, 184.
4 Bremer, John Winthrop, 278–84. Como, Blown by the Spirit, 442. An exception to this recent consensus is Theodore Dwight Bozeman, whosePrecisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Omohundro Institute; University of North Carolina Press, 2004Google Scholar) follows Winthrop's account in the essential points.
5 Winship, Making Heretics, 2.
6 “Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 330. Winship refers to Hutchinson's imprisonment as “house arrest,” making it sound milder than it was (Making Heretics, 191, 193). “House arrest” by definition means being confined in one's own house. She was placed under the supervision of an individual obviously thought trustworthy by the General Court, who lived in Roxbury rather than Boston itself and may not have kept her in his own house. This form of imprisonment meant that Hutchinson was separated from her children, the youngest of whom was not yet two years old.
7 “Mercurius Americanus,” in John Wheelwright: His Writings, with a memoir by Charles H. Bell (Boston: Prince Society, 1876; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1968) 197. This work is most likely by the son, Hutchinson's nephew by marriage, not the father, who was William Hutchinson's brother-in-law; see Bush, Sargent Jr., “ ‘Revising what we have done amisse—: John Cotton and John Wheelwright, 1640,” William and Mary Quarterly 45 (1988) 733–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Excerpt from John Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, reprinted in Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 413.
9 Winthrop's journal suggests that the ministers interrogated Hutchinson along with Cotton and Wheelwright in late October (Journal of John Winthrop, 193–94). Mary Beth Norton notes that she has followed Battis, , Saints and Sectaries (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1962) 128–33Google Scholar, “in placing this crucial conversation in December 1636, but it is nowhere dated precisely in the surviving records.” Norton, Mary Beth, Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1997) 473Google Scholar n. 31. David Hall assumes there were two meetings at which Hutchinson was questioned, one in October and one in December; Antinomian Controversy, 6. It seems very likely, however, that if Hutchinson had undergone two interrogations this fact would have emerged in the copious testimony about her statements. It is more probable that there was only one.
10 Frederick L. Gay, “Rev. Francis Marbury,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 48 (1914–1915) 290.
11 “Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 322.
12 Simmes testified that he had been “called to speak in this case”; ibid.
13 “Mr. Cottons Rejoynder,” probably from 1637, in Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 105–7; for Shepard's preaching on “love of the brethren” as negative evidence of justification, see note 40 below. See also Winship, Making Heretics, 41.
14 Ibid., 317; Simmes testified that he had “given notice” of Hutchinson to Dudley and Haines after his arrival (ibid., 323).
15 Ibid., 317.
16 “Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 320; Winthrop notes Peter's arrival in October 1635 (Journal, 156).
17 Edward Johnson's The Wonder Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England was first published in 1654 and follows the development of the Bay Colony into the early 1650s. This work is also known as History of New England and was published under that title in an edition by J. Franklin James (New York: Scribner's, 1910).
18 “Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 322.
19 For Hugh Peter's leading role, see ibid., 333; for Wilson's notes, ibid., 321, 327. See also Stearns, Raymond P., The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter 1598–1660 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press: 1954) 94Google Scholar. It is well established that a close relationship existed between Winthrop and Wilson, as John Winthrop personally selected the minister to accompany him to Massachusetts Bay. Hugh Peter arrived in the colony in the fall of 1635, in the company of his step-daughter, Elizabeth Reade, and her new husband, John Winthrop, Jr. By the usual standards of the time Hugh Peter and Winthrop Sr. were kinsmen.
20 For the questioning of Cotton by the ministers before Hutchinson was called in, see Hugh Peter's testimony: “Going on in this discourse [about “the difference between him and us”] we thought it good to send for this gentlewoman” (“Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 320).
21 Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 346.
22 Ibid, 320.
23 Since, when Peter testified, Cotton was no longer under suspicion and Hutchinson was the defendant, it appears that Peter may have been attempting to suggest that Hutchinson had been the main target all along. When John Wilson took the matter of Cotton to the magistrates in December 1636, he apparently made no reference to Hutchinson before the court. Hall includes in his collection of documents the “Sixteen Questions” addressed to Cotton by other clergymen in the Bay and stresses their importance in the history of the conflict's development. According to the account in Winthrop's Journal, the ministers did not draw up their “sixteen points” and put them to Cotton until after Wilson's denunciation (Journal, 202 and 204). The timing suggests that those questions are more likely to have been the result of Wilson's action than its cause.
24 Testimony of ruling elder Thomas Leverett of the Boston church (“Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 333).
25 Ibid., 320–22, 332–34.
26 As Rollock cites the verses, A Treatise of Gods Effectual Calling (trans. Henry Holland; London: Felix Kyngston, 1603) 21Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 17–18. David Hall's characterization of the “covenant of grace” as the one “that God established with Abraham” appears fundamentally mistaken, since the covenant established with Abraham did not reflect “the Gospel” of Christ (Antinomian Controversy, 17).
28 Rollock, Treatise of Gods Effectual Calling, 25–26 [italics in original].
29 Tracing a chain of influence from Perkins through Rollock to Preston and eventually to John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson runs counter to Phillip F. Gura's view that Perkins and Preston's covenant theology was opposed to the opinions of the “Hutchinsonians” and more in line with the preaching of Thomas Shepard; cf. A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984) 240Google Scholar. In placing Rollock as an important link between Perkins and Preston, I follow J. F. Gerhard Goeters— outline of the development of federal theology in his article on “Föderaltheologie,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983)Google Scholar. McGiffert, Michael, “The Perkinsian Moment of Federal Theology,” Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994) 146Google Scholar. McGiffert finds that Rollock differed with Perkins on significant points such as the covenant of works and was therefore a marginal figure in the English writings of the early seventeenth century. I argue, however, that his influence was not marginal for Francis Marbury or his daughter Anne. Moore, Jonathan D., English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Erdmans, 2007) 92Google Scholar. In a recent study of John Preston's life and career, Moore finds that Preston softened the doctrine on reprobation and significantly modified the way that it was preached in comparison to Elizabethan Calvinists. This is consonant with Cotton's relative stress on the covenant of grace.
30 Marbury's report of his interrogation was first printed in A Parte of a Register; it is reproduced in Gay, “Rev. Francis Marbury,” 283–87. His name appears there as “Merburie.” Gay is not alone in seeing radicalism in religion as a legacy from father to daughter.
31 Marbury, Francis, Notes of the Doctrine of Repentance: Gathered by Occaion of Opening the Fifth Petition of the Lord's Prayer. Deliuered in the Church of Alford in Lincolne-shire, by Way of Catechising (London: Peter Short, 1602)Google Scholar.
32 The records kept by the vestrymen of the church of St. Saviour in the borough of Southwark note that in 1601 they elected “Mr. Marberry” to a vacant place there. Vestry minutes of St. Saviour's for February 16, 1601; 2:359; London Metropolitan Archives. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 443CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Collinson notes that this is Francis Marbury. Benson, S., A Guide to St. Saviour's Church, Southwark (London: W. Drewett, 1885) 7Google Scholar. Benson notes that St. Saviour's (now known as Southwark Cathedral) was a very large structure in a small parish on the south bank of the Thames. The churchwardens happened to be the owners of the advowson for St. Saviour's, giving them the right to choose their own ministers, a relatively rare kind of independence. While the parish of St. Saviour's was near the theaters of Southwark such as the Globe and other establishments of dubious reputation, it was also adjacent to the London palace of the bishop of Winchester and as a courtesy belonged to his see.
33 Croft, Pauline, “The Religion of Robert Cecil,” The Historical Journal 34 (1991) 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Croft identifies Francis Marbury as one of the chaplains of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was kept on as a family chaplain by Burghley's son Robert, Lord Salisbury. A letter in the Cecil family papers mentions a “Mr. Marbury” in the household in London in the summer of 1603, shortly before King James's coronation. Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield House, vol. 101, folio 63; summary in Calendar of the Manuscripts at Hatfield House (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1930) 15:197–98. Marbury refers to his position as Robert Cecil's chaplain in a surviving letter from 1605. Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield House, vol. 114, folio 86. There is a printed summary of the letter's contents in Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury at Hatfield House (ed. Giuseppe, M. S.; London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1938) 17–615Google Scholar. The two sermons are entitled A Fruitful Sermon Necessary for the Time, preached at the Spittle upon the Tuesday in Easter weeke last (London: P. Short, 1602Google Scholar = STC 17305) and A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse the 13. of June, 1602 (London: P. Short, 1602Google Scholar = STC 17307).
34 Rollock, Treatise of Gods Effectual Calling = STC 21286.
35 Rollock, Treatise of Gods Effectual Calling, signatures A 3r–3v.
36 It is possible he had been warned by a recent letter from Shepard that it would be wise to emphasize this doctrine, for Shepard intimates that Cotton is under suspicion. See Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 24–33.
37 Shepard, Thomas, The Sincere Convert, in Works (3 vols.; Boston, Mass.: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1853) 1:58Google Scholar, 64. Mather, Cotton, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, Conn.: Silas Andrus and son, 1855) 1:389Google Scholar. More than sixty years later, Cotton Mather quoted from a letter in which Shepard distanced himself from this work, objecting to errors in the published edition. While it may not have been accurate in all details, it is unlikely that it completely distorted the gist of his theology, since Shepard also acknowledged that it was based on his own notes.
38 “Parable of the Ten Virgins,” 29–30, 37. In other words, sanctification alone did not provide evidence of justification.
39 “Parable of the Ten Virgins,” in Works of Thomas Shepard (Boston, Mass.: 1852; repr., New York: AMS, 1967) 2:16, 26, 79Google Scholar.
40 John Winthrop described the ceremony in some detail (Dunn, Journal, 168–70).
41 On backsliding, for example, Shepard, “Parable of the Ten Virgins,” 76, 105. On love for human beings as a sign of unreadiness: “Where is your heart? … If you have love, is it not divided to other things, as wife, child, friends, hopes of provision for them, and too much care hereupon for that?” (ibid., 71–72).
42 The letter to John Winthrop is thought to date from about 15 December 1636. Winthrop Papers (6 vols.; Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929–) 3:331.
43 Cotton, John, The Covenant of Gods Free Grace (London: Printed for Matthew Simmons, 1645Google Scholar), preface, sig. A2 verso.
44 Ibid., 17 [italicized in the original].
45 As presiding officer of the General Court, Winthrop intervened at least twice to deflect the subject away from any possible guilt of Cotton's. Once he cut off William Bartholmew when he appeared to be incriminating Cotton, and once when a deputy expressed a desire to pose a potentially incriminating question to Cotton (“Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson,” 339, 343). And in the “Proceedings of the General Court” in the “Short Story,” he began by stressing Cotton's unanimity with the other ministers reached at the earlier synod held a few months before the trials (Hall, Antinomian Controvery, 248).
46 I am treating Winthrop as the author of this section. Hall suggested not long ago that the “Short Story” should be treated as a text that has “no author in any meaningful sense”; it is a case of “social authorship.” David Hall, Ways of Writing: The Practice and Politics of Text-Making in Seventeenth-Century New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) 66. There are at least two objections to the view that the section headed “The proceedings of the Generall Court” was a product of social authorship, however. Parts of the narrative seem far too impassioned and self-justificatory in tone to have been derived from official records. Overall it seems a highly partisan document as well, reflecting one side's polemics rather than a general agreement within the community.
