Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 35, straight out of Connecticut.

First of all, don't worry, this isn't the long-awaited musical episode, although hopefully we will have that one day.

In fact, we're not even going to talk about Connecticut for the moment, because we still have some unfinished business with Rhode Island. We start today with one of the early great American

women, Anne Hutchinson. Born in 1591 in Alford, England, Anne Marbury was the daughter of a clergyman, and so spent her early years in an intellectual atmosphere.

In 1612, she married a merchant, William Hutchinson, and she remained interested in religious affairs. She was a follower of

Reverend John Cotton and travelled to Massachusetts in 1634. She was fascinated by Cotton's services,

and started holding meetings at her house every Tuesday to discuss the sermons with her friends,

the other women of the colony. Cotton highly approved of this. Hutchinson then did something

rather unique for the time. She started talking about her own opinions. She didn't just have to

talk about what Cotton thought. She had views too. Her meetings quickly gathered an audience

as ministers and magistrates came to hear her speak. Her views centred on the individual relationship a person had

with God, and that this relationship was far more important than the institutionalized beliefs and the

opinions of the ministers. This was risky stuff, particularly in Massachusetts. As we've seen

with Roger Williams, if there is one thing Massachusetts was about, it was about unity in the church.

Hutchinson's opinion that the views of the church weren't that important when compared to an individual's views couldn't be tolerated.

She was a social threat. She quickly found herself opposed, and her enemies accused her of anti-nominism, which is the view that God's grace releases Christians

from the need to observe strict moral principles. She found the concept of morality that her

opponents were using very narrow, and she was supported at first, but this changed. The person behind the need for

social harmony was John Winthrop, and he was respected above all. Once he opposed her, it was only a matter

of time before her support fell away. She was tried by the general court in 1637, and was sentenced to banishment,

although she was held in custody until 1638, when she was tried before the Boston Church,

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