Part 8 (1/2)
Upon their arrival in Boston, the Hutchinsons settled down in a house on the site of the present Old Corner Book Store, the head of the family made arrangements to enter upon his business affairs, and in due time both husband and wife made their application to be received as members of the church. This step was indispensable to admit the pair into Christian fellows.h.i.+p and to allow to Mr. Hutchinson the privileges of a citizen. He came through the questioning more easily than did his wife, for, in consequence of the reports already spread concerning her extravagant opinions, Mrs. Hutchinson was subjected to a most searching examination. Finally, however, she, too, pa.s.sed through the ordeal safely, the examining ministers, one of whom was her old and beloved pastor, Mr. Cotton, declaring themselves satisfied with her answers. So, in November, we find her a ”member in good standing” of the Boston church.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE, SITE OF THE HUTCHINSON HOUSE.]
From this time forward Mrs. Hutchinson was a person of great importance in Boston. Sir Harry Vane, then governor of the colony and the idol of the people, was pleased, with Mr. Cotton, to take much notice of the gifted newcomer, and their example was followed by the leading and influential people of the town, who treated her with much consideration and respect, and were quick to recognise her intellectuality as far superior to that of most members of her s.e.x. Mrs. Hutchinson soon came, indeed, to be that very remarkable thing--a prophet honoured in her own community. Adopting an established custom of the town, she held in her own home two weekly meetings--one for men and women and one exclusively for women--at which she was the oracle. And all these meetings were very generously attended.
Mrs. Hutchinson seems to have been New England's first clubwoman. Never before had women come together for independent thought and action. To be sure, nothing more lively than the sermon preached the Sunday before was ever discussed at these gatherings, but the talk was always pithy and bright, the leader's wit was always ready, and soon the house at the corner of what is now School Street came to be widely celebrated as the centre of an influence so strong and far-reaching as to make the very ministers jealous and fearful. At first, to be sure, the parsons themselves went to the meetings. Cotton, Vane, Wheelwright, and Coddington, completely embraced the leader's views, and the result upon Winthrop of attendance at these conferences was to send that official home to his closet, wrestling with himself, yet more than half persuaded.
Hawthorne's genius has conjured up the scene at Boston's first ”parlour talks,” so that we too may attend and be one among the ”crowd of hooded women and men in steeple hats and close-cropped hair ... a.s.sembled at the door and open windows of a house newly-built. An earnest expression glows in every face ... and some press inward as if the bread of life were to be dealt forth, and they feared to lose their share.”
In plain English Ann Hutchinson's doctrines were these: ”She held and advocated as the highest truth,” writes Mr. Drake, ”that a person could be justified only by an actual and manifest revelation of the Spirit to him personally. There could be no other evidence of grace. She repudiated a doctrine of works, and she denied that holiness of living alone could be received as evidence of regeneration, since hypocrites might live outwardly as pure lives as the saints do. The Puritan churches held that sanctification by the will was evidence of justification.” In advancing these views, Mrs. Hutchinson's p.r.o.nounced personal magnetism stood her in good stead. She made many converts, and, believing herself inspired to do a certain work, and emboldened by the increasing number of her followers, she soon became unwisely and unpleasantly aggressive in her criticisms of those ministers who preached a covenant of works. She seems to have been led into speaking her mind as to doctrines and persons more freely than was consistent with prudence and moderation, because she was altogether unsuspicious that what was being said in the privacy of her own house was being carefully treasured up against her. So she constantly added fuel to the flame, which was soon to burst forth to her undoing.
She was accused of fostering sedition in the church, and was then confronted with charges relative to the meetings of women held at her house. This she successfully parried.
It looked indeed as if she would surely be acquitted, when by an impa.s.sioned discourse upon special revelations that had come to her, and an a.s.sertion that G.o.d would miraculously protect her whatever the court might decree, she impugned the position of her judges and roused keen resentment. Because of this it was that she was banished ”as unfit for our society.” In the colony records of Ma.s.sachusetts the sentence p.r.o.nounced reads as follows: ”Mrs. Hutchinson (the wife of Mr. William Hutchinson) being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, shee declared voluntarily her revelations for her ground, and that shee should bee delivred and the Court ruined with their posterity; and thereupon was banished, and the meanwhile she was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her.”
Mrs. Hutchinson pa.s.sed next winter accordingly under the watch and ward of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John Cotton, who had been her friend, turning against her.
Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs.
Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they were unsuccessful. ”Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to hold her tongue,” commented the governor, in describing the court proceedings. Yet when all is said, the ”trial” was but a mockery, and those who read the proceedings as preserved in the ”History of Ma.s.sachusetts Under the Colony and Province,” written by Governor Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the judgment there p.r.o.nounced by a court which expounded theology instead of law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, ”had broken no law, either of G.o.d or of man.”
Banishment was the sentence p.r.o.nounced, and after the church which had so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did also many others whose opinions had brought them under the censure of the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far from being of their opinion, he accounted his wife ”a dear saint and servant of G.o.d.”
The rest of Mrs. Hutchinson's story is soon told. Upon the death of her husband, which occurred five years after the banishment, she went with her family into the Dutch territory of New Netherlands, settling near what is now New Roch.e.l.le. And scarcely had she become established in this place when her house was suddenly a.s.saulted by hostile Indians, who, in their revengeful fury, murdered the whole family, excepting only one daughter, who was carried away into captivity. Thus in the tragedy of an Indian ma.s.sacre was quenched the light of the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.
Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson (”Biographical Sketches”), humourously remarked, Seer that he was: ”There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings of the gentler s.e.x, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too grievous for our fathers.”
Fortunately, we of to-day have learned to take our clubwomen less tragically than Winthrop was able to do.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, Ma.s.s.]
IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES
One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Ess.e.x and North Streets, Salem. A dark, scowling building, set far enough back from the street for a modern drugstore to stand in front of it, the house itself is certainly sufficiently sinister in appearance to warrant its name, even though one is a.s.sured by authorities that no witch was ever known to have lived there. Its sole connection with witchcraft, history tells us, is that some of the preliminary examinations of witches took place here, the house being at the time the residence of Justice Jonathan Corwin. Yet it is this house that has absorbed the interest of historical pilgrims to Salem through many years, just because it looks like a witch-house, and somebody once made a muddled statement by which it came to be so regarded.
This house is the oldest standing in Salem or its vicinity, having been built before 1635. And it really has a claim to fame as the Roger Williams house, for it was here that the great ”Teacher” lived during his troubled settlement in Salem. The people of Salem, it will be remembered, persistently sought Williams as their spiritual pastor and master until the General Court at Boston unseated the Salem deputies for the acts of their const.i.tuents in retaining a man of whom they disapproved, and the magistrates sent a vessel to Salem to remove Mr.
Williams to England. The minister eluded his persecutors by fleeing through the wintry snows into the wilderness, to become the founder of the State of Rhode Island.
Mr. Williams was a close friend and confidential adviser of Governor Endicott, and those who were alarmed at the governor's impetuosity in cutting the cross from the king's colours, attributed the act to his [Williams's] influence. In taking his departure from the old house of the picture to make his way to freedom, Williams had no guide save a pocket compa.s.s, which his descendants still exhibit, and no reliance but the friendly disposition of the Indians toward him.
But it is of the witchcraft delusion with which the house of our picture is connected rather than with Williams and his story, that I wish now to speak. Jonathan Corwin, or Curwin, who was the house's link to witchcraft, was made a councillor under the new charter granted Ma.s.sachusetts by King William in 1692, and was, as has been said, one of the justices before whom the preliminary witch examinations were held.
He it was who officiated at the trial of Rebecca Nourse, of Danvers, hanged as a witch July 19, 1692, as well as at many other less remarkable and less revolting cases.
[Ill.u.s.tration: REBECCA NOURSE HOUSE, DANVERS, Ma.s.s.]
Rebecca Nourse, aged and infirm and universally beloved by her neighbours, was accused of being a witch--why, one is unable to find out. The jury was convinced of her innocence, and brought in a verdict of ”not guilty,” but the court sent them out again with instructions to find her guilty. This they did, and she was executed. The tradition is that her sons disinterred her body by stealth from the foot of the gallows where it had been thrown, and brought it to the old homestead, now still standing in Danvers, laying it reverently, and with many tears, in the little family burying ground near by.
The majority of the persons condemned in Salem were either old or weak-witted, victims who in their testimony condemned themselves, or seemed to the jury to do so. t.i.tuba, the Indian slave, is an example of this. She was tried in March, 1692, by the Justice Corwin of the big, dark house. She confessed that under threats from Satan, who had most often appeared to her as a man in black, accompanied by a yellow bird, she had tortured the girls who appeared against her. She named accomplices, and was condemned to imprisonment. After a few months she was sold to pay the expenses of her lodging in jail, and is lost to history. But this was by no means the end of the matter. The ”afflicted children” in Salem who had made trouble before now began to accuse men and women of unimpeachable character. Within a few months several hundred people were arrested and thrown into jails. As Governor Hutchinson, the historian of the time, points out, the only way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser oneself. The state of affairs was indeed a.n.a.logous to that which obtained in France a century later, when, during the Reign of Terror, men of property and position lived in the hourly fear of being regarded as ”a suspect,” and frequently threw suspicion on their neighbours the better to retain their own heads.
We of to-day cannot understand the madness that inspired such cruelty.