Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy
Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston in 1634 and within a few years had upended the religious and political foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, triggering among the most consequential crises in early American history. The controversy bearing her name — the Antinomian Controversy — pitted her theological convictions against the authority of the Puritan clergy and magistracy, ultimately resulting in her banishment from the colony in 1638. The episode left a lasting mark on Boston's identity, raising questions about religious liberty, the relationship between church and state, and the place of women in public life that would reverberate far beyond the seventeenth century. Today, Hutchinson is remembered as a central figure in the early history of New England, and her story remains inseparable from the city's founding narrative.
History
Anne Hutchinson was born Anne Marbury in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, in 1591. She grew up in a household shaped by nonconformist Protestant thought; her father, Francis Marbury, was a clergyman who had himself faced ecclesiastical censure for criticizing the quality of ministers in the Church of England. This background instilled in Hutchinson a willingness to scrutinize religious authority and to draw her own conclusions from scripture. She married William Hutchinson in 1612, and the couple eventually had fifteen children. They became followers of the Reverend John Cotton, a prominent Puritan minister whose preaching emphasized the covenant of grace — the idea that salvation came through God's free gift rather than through human moral effort — over what Hutchinson and Cotton characterized as the covenant of works, in which outward moral behavior was seen as evidence of election.
When John Cotton emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1633, the Hutchinson family followed him the following year. Anne Hutchinson quickly established herself as a respected figure in the Boston community, working as a midwife and healer and hosting religious discussions in her home. These meetings, which began as gatherings primarily of women to discuss recent sermons, grew to include men and eventually drew scores of participants. At these sessions, Hutchinson articulated her view that most of the colony's ministers — with the exception of Cotton and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright — were preaching the covenant of works rather than the covenant of grace. This charge struck at the legitimacy of the entire ministerial establishment.[1]
The theological dispute that came to be called the Antinomian Controversy emerged fully into public view in 1636 and 1637. The term "antinomian" — meaning "against the law" — was applied by Hutchinson's opponents to suggest that her followers believed the moral law had no binding force on those already saved by grace. Hutchinson herself rejected this characterization, arguing instead for a direct experience of the Holy Spirit's indwelling as the true mark of salvation. The controversy divided the colony sharply. Governor Henry Vane, who had arrived in 1635 and was sympathetic to Hutchinson's views, supported her faction. His political rival, former governor John Winthrop, led the opposition. The dispute extended into the political arena, affecting elections, military appointments, and the general cohesion of the colonial government. When Wheelwright preached a sermon in January 1637 that the authorities considered seditious, the controversy moved toward open confrontation.[2]
Culture
The Antinomian Controversy illuminates the cultural tensions embedded in the Puritan project of building a godly commonwealth in New England. The Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony had not simply fled religious persecution; they understood themselves as constructing a model society — what Winthrop famously described as a "city upon a hill" — in which theological correctness and civil order were inseparable. In this framework, a theological dispute was never merely academic. A challenge to the clergy's interpretation of scripture was simultaneously a challenge to the social and political order that the clergy helped to legitimize. Hutchinson's meetings, by offering an alternative forum for religious instruction, implicitly questioned the authority of the ordained ministry and the structures that depended upon it.
The role of gender in the controversy also reflected broader cultural assumptions of the period. Women in Puritan New England were expected to be godly wives and mothers, and within those roles they could exercise considerable spiritual influence in the domestic sphere. Hutchinson's public theological discussions, however, crossed into territory that her opponents considered inappropriate for a woman. At her civil trial in November 1637, Governor Winthrop charged her not only with harboring those who had signed a petition supporting Wheelwright but also with holding meetings that were unsuitable to her sex. Hutchinson's responses at the trial were articulate and legally sharp; she repeatedly pressed her accusers to identify the specific law she had broken. Her eventual undoing came when she claimed to have received direct divine revelation — a claim that confirmed her opponents' fears about the dangerous subjectivism they believed her theology encouraged. Her church trial followed in March 1638, resulting in her formal excommunication from the Boston church.[3]
Notable Residents
Anne Hutchinson herself stands as among the most significant figures associated with early Boston. She lived on what is now Washington Street in Boston, and the bustling settlement she joined was still only a few years old. Her home became the center of the colony's most divisive theological debate, and her name has been attached to the Antinomian Controversy ever since. After her banishment, she helped found the settlement of Portsmouth in what is now Rhode Island, joining the network of communities established by those expelled from or dissatisfied with Massachusetts Bay, including Roger Williams, who had been banished two years earlier and had founded Providence.
John Winthrop, Hutchinson's chief antagonist, was himself one of Boston's most consequential early residents. As governor and chronicler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop shaped not only the political response to the Antinomian Controversy but also the historical record through his journal, which remains a primary source for the period. John Cotton, whose preaching had inspired Hutchinson's theological development and whose own position during the controversy was ambiguous — he was eventually reconciled with the colonial authorities — was the teacher of the Boston church and among the most influential ministers in early New England. John Wheelwright, Hutchinson's brother-in-law and fellow traveler, was banished along with her and eventually settled in what would become New Hampshire, founding the town of Exeter.
Attractions
Boston today preserves memory of the Antinomian Controversy through several commemorative sites and institutions. A statue of Anne Hutchinson stands outside the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, erected in the twentieth century to honor her as a defender of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The statue was placed near that of Mary Dyer, another woman associated with religious dissent in colonial Boston who was executed in 1660 for returning to Massachusetts Bay after being banished for her Quaker beliefs. Together, the two statues represent the colony's legacy of religious intolerance and the individuals who challenged it.[4]
The Freedom Trail, Boston's celebrated walking tour of historically significant sites, passes through many of the neighborhoods where the events of the Antinomian Controversy unfolded. The Old South Meeting House, the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and other landmarks along the trail contextualize the broader history of religious and civic life in colonial and revolutionary Boston. The city's historical organizations, including the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Bostonian Society, maintain collections of documents and artifacts relevant to the colonial period, including materials related to the Antinomian Controversy and its principal figures. Visitors interested in the deeper history of the controversy can explore period maps and records through these institutions.[5]
Legacy and Significance
The Antinomian Controversy left a lasting imprint on the legal and religious culture of New England. The trials of Hutchinson and Wheelwright were among the first occasions in which the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay was forced to articulate and defend the limits it placed on religious expression. The outcome — banishment for those who dissented too sharply from the established order — demonstrated that the Puritan vision of a godly commonwealth had little room for theological pluralism. At the same time, the vigor and coherence of Hutchinson's challenge helped to establish a counter-tradition of dissent that would eventually contribute to broader arguments for religious liberty in the Anglo-American world.
Historians have returned repeatedly to the Antinomian Controversy as a lens through which to examine the intersections of religion, gender, and political authority in early America. Hutchinson's ability to attract a substantial following, her skilled self-defense at trial, and the extraordinary measures the colonial government took to silence her have all been subjects of sustained scholarly attention. Her legacy in Boston is recognized not only through the commemorative statue on Beacon Hill but also in the naming of the Hutchinson River Parkway in New York, the state through which she traveled after leaving New England, and where she was killed in an attack in 1643. For Boston, the Antinomian Controversy remains a defining episode — one that reveals both the ambitions and the contradictions of the city's Puritan origins.[6]