As Anne Hutchinson was leaving her Boston meetinghouse where she had just been excommunicated, a supporter called out:

"The Lord sanctify this unto you!"

She turned to face everyone present and said:

"The Lord judges not as man judges. Better to be cast out of the church than to deny Christ." ¹

Now convicted of heresy and sedition, excommunicated from the Church, and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she made final preparations to leave. She had thought of joining John Wheelwright, also banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of the Antinomian Controversy, and the families that went with him to purchase land and found Exeter, New Hampshire. Instead, her eldest son, Edward, returned in March with news from her husband, Will, that they had successfully purchased land on Aquidneck Island (Rhode Island) in Narragansett Bay and were building houses and forming a community. ²

On April 1, 1638 Anne left the Hutchinson farm at Wollaston (Quincy, Massachusetts). A foot of snow had fallen in late March, and the entourage of family, friends, horses, and carts, began a six day walk to Rhode Island. William and Mary Dyer and their children were with them. Some of the elder Hutchinson children did remain in Massachusetts. ³

They reached Reverend Roger Williams's Providence Plantation in what is now Rhode Island after six days, which was out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's territory. Williams was a Separatist, not just a Puritan, and had been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and barely escaped before being put on a ship to England. Williams pioneered concepts of freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, and was much aligned with Anne Hutchinson's beliefs. ⁴

Providence Plantation at that time had less than 100 residents. Anne's entourage then went by ship the 16 miles to Aquidneck and in the second week of April she was reunited with her husband Will after six months apart. ⁵ The sixty or seventy settlers that accompanied Anne were the first settlers there. It was first known as Pocasset, then renamed Portsmouth (See here). In a few weeks settlers stemming from the Portsmouth Compact (signed March 7, 1638) began arriving and the town of Portsmouth was founded. ⁶

There was an earthquake a few weeks after Anne's arrival on Aquidneck Island. John Winthrop, keeping informed about his nemesis, attributed it to God's "continued disquietude" of Anne Hutchinson. ⁷

In May 1638 Hutchinson, forty-six at the time, went into labor and the pregnancy was what is known today as a hydatidiform mole. It is an abnormal pregnancy with a non-viable fertilized egg resulting in a mass of deformed tissue that most often results in a miscarriage. ⁸ Winthrop found out about the deformed birth, and it became public knowledge. He and John Cotton saw it as God punishing the heretic. ⁹ It should be noted that Mary Dyer also had a deformed birth pregnancy in October 1637 where Anne Hutchinson had served as midwife, and despite attempts to keep it quiet, it became public knowledge. ¹⁰ More fuel for the God's punishment argument.

John Winthrop's obsession with Anne continued, and in February 1640, hoping to extract a recantation from her, sent three church members to visit her in Rhode Island. ¹¹

Richard B. Morris writes that when they told Anne that they were from the church in Boston, she replied:

"What from the Church at Boston? I know no such church, neither will I own it. Call it the whore and strumpet of Boston, no Church of Christ!"

Morris' descriptive comment deserves quoting: "Sprayed by this picturesque Biblical buckshot, her visitors scampered for cover." ¹²

They then sought out her husband, Will, who responded (virtually his only recorded spoken words, as opposed to his wife Anne):

"I am more nearly tied to my wife than to the church. I do think her to be a dear saint and servant of God." ¹³

Anne's story will continue in the next installment.