William Hutchinson
Encyclopedia
William Hutchinson was a judge (chief magistrate) of the Colony of Portsmouth
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Portsmouth is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,389 at the 2010 U.S. Census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water. Most of its land area lies on Aquidneck...

 on the island of Aquidneck, also known as Rhode Island (and later a part of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was one of the original English Thirteen Colonies established on the east coast of North America that, after the American Revolution, became the modern U.S...

). Sailing from England to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 with his large family in 1634, he became a merchant in Boston and served as both Deputy to the General Court and selectman. In Boston, his wife, the famed Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson was one of the most prominent women in colonial America, noted for her strong religious convictions, and for her stand against the staunch religious orthodoxy of 17th century Massachusetts...

, became embroiled in a theological controversy with the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 leaders of the colony, resulting in her banishment in 1638. Hutchinson and 18 others departed with her to form the new settlement of Pocasset on the Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound. Covering 147 mi2 , the Bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor, and includes a small archipelago...

, renamed Portsmouth
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Portsmouth is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,389 at the 2010 U.S. Census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water. Most of its land area lies on Aquidneck...

, one of the original towns in the Rhode Island colony.

In Portsmouth, Hutchinson became treasurer, then, in 1639 when controversy compelled the judge (governor) of the town, William Coddington
William Coddington
William Coddington was an early magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, serving as the Judge of Portsmouth, Judge of Newport, Governor of Portsmouth and Newport, Deputy Governor of the entire colony, and then Governor of the...

 to relocate and found the town of Newport
Newport
Newport is a city and unitary authority area in Wales. Standing on the banks of the River Usk, it is located about east of Cardiff and is the largest urban area within the historic county boundaries of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent...

, Hutchinson became the chief magistrate of Portsmouth, which lasted for less than a year. Hutchinson died shortly after June 1641, after which his widow and many of her younger children moved to New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

 (later in the Bronx in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

). Mrs. Hutchinson and all but one of her children perished in a massacre which sprang from tensions between the Dutch and the Indians. William Hutchinson was described by Governor John Winthrop
John Winthrop
John Winthrop was a wealthy English Puritan lawyer, and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of...

 as being mild tempered, somewhat weak, and living within the shadow of his prominent and outspoken wife.

Early life

Born into a prominent Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

 family, William Hutchinson was the grandson of John Hutchinson (1515-1565) who had been Sheriff, Alderman, and Mayor of the town of Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....

, dying in office during his second term as mayor. John's youngest son, Edward (1564-1632), moved to Alford
Alford, Lincolnshire
- Notable residents :* Captain John Smith who lived in nearby Willoughby* Anne Hutchinson, pioneer settler and religious reformer in the United States* Thomas Paine, who was an excise officer in the town....

 and with his wife, Susanna, had 11 children, the oldest of whom was William, who was baptized 14 August 1586 in Alford. William Hutchinson grew up in Alford, becoming a merchant in the cloth trade, and as a young man moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Here he became close to an old acquaintance from Alford, Anne Marbury
Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson was one of the most prominent women in colonial America, noted for her strong religious convictions, and for her stand against the staunch religious orthodoxy of 17th century Massachusetts...

, the daughter of Francis Marbury
Francis Marbury
Francis Marbury, or Merbury was a Cambridge educated English clergyman, school master, and Puritan reformer now remembered as a playwright and the father of Anne Hutchinson.-Life:...

 and Bridget Dryden, and the couple was married on 9 August 1612 at the Church of Saint Mary Woolnoth
St Mary Woolnoth
St. Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, located on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street near the Bank of England.- Early history :...

 on Lombard Street in London. Anne's father was a clergyman, school master, and Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 reformer who was educated at Cambridge.

Hutchinson and his wife raised a large family in Alford, as he prospered in his business. The couple had 14 children in England, one of whom died in infancy, and two of whom died from the plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

. The Hutchinsons, particularly Anne, became very enamored with the preaching of the Reverend John Cotton who was the vicar of Saint Botolph's Church in the town of Boston
Boston, Lincolnshire
Boston is a town and small port in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. It is the largest town of the wider Borough of Boston local government district and had a total population of 55,750 at the 2001 census...

, less than 20 miles distant from Alford. The Hutchinsons made the day-long round trip to Boston whenever they could to hear Cotton preach, but Cotton had strong Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 sympathies, and when Archbishop William Laud
William Laud
William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...

 began cracking down on those whose opinions differed from those of the established Anglican church, Cotton was forced into hiding, and then had to flee the country to avoid imprisonment. Mrs. Hutchinson was distraught to lose her mentor, and the Hutchinsons would have sailed with Cotton to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 aboard the ship Griffin in 1633, but Mrs. Hutchinson's 14th pregnancy kept the family from leaving. However, with the intention of following Cotton to New England as soon as they could, the Hutchinsons sent there oldest son, 20-year old Edward
Edward Hutchinson (captain)
Edward Hutchinson was the oldest son of the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony William Hutchinson and the dissident minister Anne Hutchinson...

, under the care of Cotton. William Hutchinson's youngest brother, also named Edward, was also aboard the same ship with his wife.

In 1634 William Hutchinson, his wife Anne, his other ten children, and his mother, Susanna, sailed from England to New England on the Griffin, the same ship that had taken Cotton and their oldest son a year earlier, and the family first resided at Boston where Hutchinson was admitted to the Boston Church on 26 October 1634, and his wife was admitted seven days later. He became a merchant in Boston and took the freeman's oath there in 1635. He was one of the town's Deputies to the Massachusetts Bay
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...

 General Court from 1635 to 1636, and was also a selectman from 1635 to 1637, attending a selectmen's meeting for the last time in January 1638 as his tenure in Boston was coming to an end.

Trouble in Boston

Hutchinson's wife was described by historian Thomas W. Bicknell
Thomas W. Bicknell
Thomas W. Bicknell , American educator, historian, and author, lived to be 91.Bicknell, born in Barrington, Rhode Island, he was the son of a farmer, minister, state legislator, and Colonel in the Bristol County, Rhode Island Militia, Thomas would become a wealthy eastern historian and educator...

 as "a pure and excellent woman, to whose person and conduct there attaches no stain." She was helpful to the sick and needy, and gifted in argument and ready speech, but she saw theological doctrines a little differently than the Puritan elders. In late 1636 Governor John Winthrop
John Winthrop
John Winthrop was a wealthy English Puritan lawyer, and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of...

 gave the first warning of an issue that would consume his attention, and that of other Boston leaders, for the next two years. He wrote that Mrs. Hutchinson, "a woman of ready wit and bold spirit," had brought with her two dangerous theological errors, elaborating upon them in his journal. She was holding private meetings at her home, drawing many people from Boston as well as other towns, including many prominent citizens, and entreating them to a religious view that was antithetical to the rigid orthodoxy of the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 church. As the situation worsened, Mrs. Hutchinson was put on trial in November 1637, convicted, and banished from the colony along with some of her followers. To put the expulsion into perspective, Bicknell wrote in his 20th century history of Rhode Island:
The court order banishing her reads: "Mrs. Anne Hutchinson (the wife of William Hutchinson) being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, shee declared volentarily her revelations for her ground, & that shee should bee delivered & the Court ruined, with their posterity & thereupon was banished, & the meanwhile was comitted to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her." On 12 March 1638 it was ordered that she must be gone by the end of the month.

Settling in Rhode Island

On 7 March 1638, before leaving Boston, William Hutchinson and other supporters of his wife signed an instrument, sometimes called the Portsmouth Compact
Portsmouth Compact
The Portsmouth Compact was a document signed on March 7, 1638 that established the settlement of Portsmouth, which is now a town in the state of Rhode Island...

, agreeing to form a non-sectarian government that was Christian in character. The group of signers considered going to New Netherland
New Netherland
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

, but Roger Williams
Roger Williams (theologian)
Roger Williams was an English Protestant theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America,...

 suggested they purchase some land on the Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay
Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound. Covering 147 mi2 , the Bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor, and includes a small archipelago...

 from the Indians, which they did. They settled on the island of Aquidneck (an island called Rhode Island, whose name was later given to the entire colony and state), and formed the settlement of Pocasset, renamed Portsmouth
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Portsmouth is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,389 at the 2010 U.S. Census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water. Most of its land area lies on Aquidneck...

 in 1639. In June 1638 Hutchinson was the treasurer of the town and William Coddington
William Coddington
William Coddington was an early magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, serving as the Judge of Portsmouth, Judge of Newport, Governor of Portsmouth and Newport, Deputy Governor of the entire colony, and then Governor of the...

 was called judge, the name given to the chief magistrate of the settlement. The following year a disagreement prompted Coddington and a few other leaders to leave Portsmouth and begin a new settlement at the south end of the island called Newport
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...

. Hutchinson became the judge (governor) of the Portsmouth settlement from 1639 until 12 March 1640, when Portsmouth united with Newport to become the Colony of Rhode Island, with Coddington elected as governor of the two-town colony, and Hutchinson becoming one of his assistants. In his journal, Governor Winthrop described the 1639 disagreement in Portsmouth, writing, "the people grew very tumultuous and put out Mr. Coddington and the other three magistrates, and chose Mr. William Hutchinson only, a man of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife, who had been the beginner of all the former troubles in the country and still continued to breed disturbance."

Hutchinson died in Portsmouth shortly after June 1641, after which his widow left Rhode Island to live in the part of New Netherland that later was on the border between the Bronx and Westchester County, New York
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...

. Here, as the result of tensions between the Dutch and the Indians, she, six of her children, a son-in-law, and as many as seven others (likely servants) were massacred by Indians in late summer 1643.

Family and descendants

William and Anne Hutchinson had 15 children, all but the last one being born in England. The oldest child, Edward
Edward Hutchinson (captain)
Edward Hutchinson was the oldest son of the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony William Hutchinson and the dissident minister Anne Hutchinson...

, was a military captain who died from wounds suffered at the battle known as Wheeler's Surprise
Wheeler's Surprise
Wheeler's Surprise, and the ensuing Siege of Brookfield, was a battle between Nipmuc Indians under Muttawmp, and the English of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the command of Thomas Wheeler and Cpt. Edward Hutchinson, in August of 1675 during King Phillip's War...

 during King Philip's War
King Philip's War
King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the...

. The fourth child, Faith, married Thomas Savage
Thomas Savage (major)
Thomas Savage was an English soldier and New England colonist and merchant, attaining the rank of major in King Philip's War.-Life:...

, a Boston soldier and merchant, and the fifth child, Bridget, married John Sanford
John Sanford (governor)
John Sanford , was an early settler of Boston, Massachusetts, an original settler of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and a governor of the combined towns of Portsmouth and Newport, in the Rhode Island colony, dying in office after serving for less than a full term...

 who succeeded William Coddington
William Coddington
William Coddington was an early magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, serving as the Judge of Portsmouth, Judge of Newport, Governor of Portsmouth and Newport, Deputy Governor of the entire colony, and then Governor of the...

 as Governor of (the two towns of) Rhode Island following the repeal of the Coddington Commission. Their 14th child, Susanna
Susanna Cole
Susanna Cole, born Susanna Hutchinson , was the only survivor of an Indian attack in which many of her siblings, her famed mother, Anne Hutchinson, and other household members were killed...

 was the only survivor of the Indian attack that killed her mother and six of her siblings, and was taken captive for several years. Hutchinson's sister Mary was the wife of the Reverend John Wheelwright
John Wheelwright
John Wheelwright was a clergyman in England and America.-Early life:...

, another banished minister who founded Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The town's population was 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood...

. Prominent descendants of William and Anne Hutchinston include U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

, George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...

 and George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

.

See also



External links

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