Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson's (1591-1643) father, Francis Marbury, died in 1611 and the following year, 1612, she married William Hutchinson (1586-1642), a successful London fabric merchant and they moved back to their home town, Alford, England. They became followers of Reverend John Cotton (1585-1652) and attended his sermons at the Church of Saint Botolph's, in Boston (England), twenty-four miles from Alford. ¹ [The name Boston arose from an abbreviation of Boltophston, from "Botolph's Stone" or "Botolph's Town", the medieval name for its earliest church, named for Saint Botolph, an Anglo-Saxon monk in the seventh century.²]

Rev. John Cotton's theological doctrines of absolute grace and conditional reprobation [RHB161], were at odds with the standard Church of England, and attracted Anne and William Hutchinson. Cotton became a spiritual mentor of Anne. Puritan ministers in England could be removed from the clergy and imprisoned for their non-conformist views, but Cotton benefited from supportive superiors, a gift for preaching, and being very good at careful wording to avoid conflict. But even his popularity did not prevent him from eventually being called before the Court of High Commission in London in 1632. Just as Anne's father had been years prior. ³

Cotton went into hiding in the Puritan underground network while he decided his next move. He rejected separatism (embraced by the Mayflower believers who established Plymouth Colony in 1620), firmly remaining a puritan, wanting to "purify" the Church of England, not separate from it. John Winthrop, then Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote to Cotton, inviting him to come there. ⁴

In June of 1633, Cotton, his wife and daughter, along with another Puritan leader, Thomas Hooker, boarded the Griffin and sailed to America. They arrived in the new Boston in September, and Governor Winthrop met them on the pier. Cotton was given a post to preach in Boston, and Hooker a post to preach in Newtown (now Cambridge). ⁵ Anne's eldest son, Edward Hutchinson was also on board the Griffin on this voyage.

Soon, Anne and William Hutchinson and family would follow Cotton to America.