Home > Colonial America > Excerpt From the Trial of Anne Hutchinson

Reprinted in Major Problems in American Colonial History

Published in 1993

Edited by Karen Ordahl Kupperman

"It is said, I will pour by Spirit upon your Daughters, and they shall prophesie. . . If god give me a gift of Prophecy, I may use it."

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was founded as an ideal Puritan community, religious disputes often became legal problems. Although religion and government were supposedly separate, only men who were members of the Puritan church could vote or hold office. The Puritans expected some political debates, but they would not tolerate views that threatened the religious harmony of the colony. A few years after the initial settlement of Massachusetts Bay, several dissidents (those who question or oppose...