Mistress Bradstreet

by Charlotte Gordon

  The Reverend Zechariah Symmes had been among her comrades on the passage over and had become alarmed at her remarks (although he never recorded what they were), citing “the corruptness and narrowness of her opinions,” and warning Governor Dudley that Hutchinson might harm the Massachusetts community’s purity of faith. But when Dudley, Cotton, and Symmes himself examined Mrs. Hutchinson, it seemed that “she held nothing different from us,” and at last she was granted membership in Cotton’s church in November, a humiliating two months after her arrival.16

  Now that Dudley had vouched for her sanctity, Mrs. Hutchinson was poised to assert her influence in Boston, New Towne, and the surrounding settlements. Not that this was necessarily her conscious aim, but her style was unhesitating and audacious. Immediately she plunged into what she knew best, the business of childbirth. The official town midwife was Mistress Jane Hawkins, but the need for skillful health care was boundless in the settlements. Hutchinson, who had extensive experience, soon fell into the habit of accompanying Hawkins on her visits to women in labor. Before long, Hutchinson herself was often summoned to deliver babies. If Hawkins was the more skilled medical technician, Hutchinson was a supremely talented religious counselor. This was important because ministers were unable to attend this exclusively feminine rite, and the women who were undergoing their travails needed spiritual sustenance as well as hands-on care.

  In such a pious community, any woman who could assume the role of spiritual guide was regarded with reverence, and soon Hutchinson was known to most of the women in the settlements. Her fame was limited to female circles, however, since in matters pertaining to childbirth men bowed to women’s opinions and were often unaware of the details of their wives’ labors. Otherwise, Hutchinson seemed to hold herself aloof. Surprisingly, she refused to go to any of the informal discussion groups where pious individuals could study the Bible together or converse on topics such as the true tenets of faith. Such groups were not an official requirement in the colony, but most people went, and so Hutchinson’s absence was conspicuous.

  To those whom she appeared to shun, Hutchinson’s refusals seemed to be a pointed rejection of local efforts to deepen piety. In scriptural expertise, she could keep up with the most learned of the men and was a devoted follower of Cotton. But she was asserting her difference from everyone else right from the beginning, and tongues wagged. Mistress Hutchinson was clearly full of “pride,” her enemies said; she must think she was better than they were.17

  This kind of vigilant acrimony when people were faced with anything out of the ordinary was common fare in both Boston and New Towne. Dudley had taught his daughters that it was their duty to report to him or to their husbands anything that seemed unusual or that contradicted the godly mission of the colonists. It was everyone’s job to know what everyone else was doing. In Plymouth, for example, members of that settlement’s governing board, “the grand jury,” were required to scrutinize people’s behavior on a daily basis, scouring the streets for “idleness and other evils occasioned thereby” and hauling any wrongdoers straight into court.18 Sin was infectious, and unpunished bad behavior could bring about everyone’s destruction. The state of your conscience was never solely a personal affair but was also a civic matter.

  Ironically, though, it was because of the “aspersions” against her piety and the criticism she faced for not attending these meetings that Hutchinson began to hold gatherings for women in her house. How else could she disprove the reports that she “did despise all” the rules and customs, the “ordinances,” of Boston? Or so she would argue a few years later when called to account for her actions.19

  At first Hutchinson’s meetings were small—maybe five or six women—and were dedicated to studying the Bible and discussing Cotton’s sermons. But they rapidly mushroomed into gatherings of sixty or more. In the few months she had been in the colonies, Hutchinson had helped deliver numerous infants and had buoyed their mothers with her stalwart faith. She had also proven herself to be a “fruitful vine” in her own right, having borne eleven children. Clearly she had important lessons to teach, and women of all ages flocked to her side.

  But to her discomfited neighbor, John Winthrop, it seemed that “shee kept open house for all comers, and set up two Lecture dayses in the week, when they usually met at her house threescore or fourescore persons.”20 That winter the Boston men watched with growing concern as their wives trooped down the dirt lane and turned the corner to the Hutchinsons’ homestead. No male could be certain what went on at these meetings that most people called “gossipings,” the conventional term for such female gatherings. Each time a goodwife entered the dark cave of Mrs. Hutchinson’s home, the door was effectively slammed in the face of her husband.21

  The sort of female gossiping that the Bay colony men were beginning to suspect occurred in Hutchinson’s house loomed as a danger because their settlement depended on “neighborliness.” If women were prone to “wandering about from house to house,” the men worried they would “spea[k] things which they ought not,” as Paul wrote in a frequently quoted passage from the New Testament. Such female “scolds,” their critics held, relished trouble because they wanted “to make debate abroad” and would never be able to resist the temptation to announce their husband’s flaws for “all the Town” to hear. To speak in public like this—to “publish”—was to usurp the role of men and trespass into a world where a woman did not belong. Such “masculine women buried silence to revive slander.” Women’s “gossip,” if uncontrolled and left unchecked, could render the speakers “deformed,” “man-like,” and even “monstrous.”22

  To the anxious male leaders in Boston and New Towne, this seemed the grotesque direction in which Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers were headed, and before many months had passed, their fears were confirmed. Hutchinson encouraged her pupils to revere Cotton’s words but to despise the other Massachusetts ministers, especially the preacher John Wilson. As a result, whenever Wilson spoke, the women would get up and leave the meetinghouse or else direct insulting looks in his direction.

  This behavior was an assault on one of the premier authorities of the colony and could not be left unchecked. But it was difficult to know how to stop Hutchinson and her followers. They were women and lived in a kind of strange legal netherworld, since they occupied no public positions in the colony. They could not be charged with sedition or treason. It was not illegal for a woman to leave the meetinghouse during a sermon. She could always cite female infirmities if accused of wrongdoing.23

  As time went on, more reports against Hutchinson accumulated. Even though they were caught up in the Williams affair, the ministers and magistrates could not ignore that Hutchinson’s enemies accused her of an important theological transgression: dismissing good deeds as an important element of the Christian’s life. Such a stance could only result in the paralysis of the faithful, her opponents complained; if there were no benefit to be had in performing virtuous acts, then why would anyone bother with piety, sanctity, charity, or prayer? Her teachings would result in a licentious free-for-all; the self-discipline and upstanding ethical behavior the Puritans respected would be ignored and even flouted.

  The logic of Hutchinson’s enemies was based on the Reform paradox that although no person could depend on his or her own labors to achieve salvation, pious persons should still try to behave ethically and improve themselves, even if such a mission were doomed to failure. In other words, one’s moral behavior was important and should not be dismissed, despite the teaching that God’s will was incontrovertible.

  Even if one were a dutiful Puritan, it was easy to slip to the wrong side of this delicate issue. Winthrop himself once confessed that he often fell into the torpor of believing that his own good actions could help him win God’s grace.24 However, Mrs. Hutchinson’s emphasis on the individual’s helplessness was too much for the authorities to tolerate. After months of misgivings, Dudley took back his endorsement of this accomplished woman and joined the other ma
gistrates in voicing their pressing concerns, writing that “her strange opinions”—that Cotton was the only righteous minister in the colony and that the performance of good deeds was only meaningless busywork—were causing dissension and creating factions among the people.25

  Consequently, when the weather grew hot and muggy in the summer of 1635 and Anne discovered that she was pregnant again, she knew that she would not be able to cross the river to Mrs. Hutchinson’s house for spiritual counsel. Even had she wanted to, Anne could not have swayed her father from his stance. It was no longer possible for any of the Dudley women even to recognize Hutchinson if they passed her on the street.

  Anne submitted to this policy without any evidence of resistance; however, it seems likely that her younger sister Sarah was not so amenable. Her volatile temperament made it far more challenging for her to obey her father’s rules than for her more self-disciplined older sisters.

  As soon as his term as governor had expired, Dudley decided it was time to flee the corruption of Boston, New Towne, and the simmering contention concerning Hutchinson. Anne, Samuel, and Patience were safely married and living squarely within the Puritan fold, but Sarah and Mercy were respectively fifteen and fourteen years old. He needed to protect them from the sin Hutchinson and Williams represented. As far as Sarah was concerned, however, he was probably too late. Her scandalous future actions would bear an uncanny resemblance to Hutchinson’s, suggesting that she had done the unthinkable and succumbed to the dangerous woman’s contagion.

  Dudley himself must have been tired. While governor he had heard case after case of quarreling and corruption on top of the Hutchinson debacle and the Williams scandal. Neither Boston nor New Towne was the ideal city of God he had envisioned. Indeed, each now seemed dangerous to his family’s spiritual health. And so immediately after the court had proclaimed Williams’s exile, Dudley ordered his family to pack their bags. Like the restless saint he had vowed to stop, he, too, would flee the colony’s impurities and embark on yet another strenuous pilgrimage. Once again Anne would have to follow in her father’s pious footsteps, wherever they might lead.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ipswich

  ANNE KNEW THAT HER FATHER was eager to shake the mud of government from his boots and that he was anxious about the religious well-being of his family, but even she must have been surprised at how readily he bade farewell to New Towne.1 Driven by the impulse to breathe the clear, pure air of the frontier, at age fifty-nine Dudley was undeterred by the challenges that stopped most other settlers from venturing so far away from the established towns.

  Ipswich, the site he had decided upon, lay on the edge of the wilderness, forty miles north of Boston—a two-day hike over largely uncharted ground. Salem, the closest village, was about eighteen miles away. Except for a few scattered huts on the site of modern-day Portsmouth, New Hampshire, there were no settlements beyond this frontier post.2 Characteristically, Dudley seemed to find the idea of virgin soil appealing. Perhaps here he could have more control over shaping a godly community.

  The Indian nomenclature for this bountiful and as yet unspoiled place was Agawam. With the goal of opening up fresh farming and grazing land for the waves of emigrants arriving from England, in 1633 Winthrop’s son, John Winthrop Jr., had led twelve others in an expedition to this site that one visitor described as

  one of the most spacious for a plantation, being near the sea, it aboundeth with fish, and flesh of fowles and beasts, great meads and Marshes and plaine plowing grounds, many good rivers and harbors and no rattle snakes.3

  The younger Winthrop was so enthusiastic about the possibilities of this land that he moved his new wife there almost immediately. Sadly, though, she did not last long in the wilderness, dying in childbirth in 1634.

  Although Winthrop Jr. hastily fled the scene of his young wife’s death, leaving the little settlement to develop on its own, Dudley was not discouraged by the young man’s departure. He believed wholeheartedly in the enthusiastic accounts of Ipswich, just as he had swallowed the good news from the New World back in the 1620s. The new promised land seemed so close, they had better rush there quickly.

  To Anne there was nothing remarkable about Dudley’s behavior. She understood that it would be as hopeless to attempt to deter her father in his pursuit of a more ideal settlement as it had been for Dudley to try to stop Williams from seeking a pure kingdom of Christians. Even the fact that the little clearing in the wilderness was particularly vulnerable to Indian attacks could not prevent her father from chasing the mirage of perfection.

  As usual, Dudley rolled through all obstacles to their move with the sense that he was merely doing his duty. It did not seem to cross his mind that his commitment to the spiritual health of his family might end up shortening their lives. As his children knew well, he deemed such worries beneath the notice of any truly religious person.

  Anne helped the servants pack boxes and sort through clothing, repair the holes in their blankets, and heap grain into sacks, but she undoubtedly mourned the leave-taking that lay ahead. New Towne may have been tiny compared with the cities of the Old World, but the settlement had swollen to more than sixty families, and nearby Boston was even larger. Almost every month in the summer and fall a fresh boatload of immigrants arrived, many of them intent on seeking their salvation in the holy land of New England. The newly arrived settlers gave Anne news from home, and she and her family could easily order silks, spices, books, and other amenities from England.

  Indeed, in the four years they had been there, Anne and her family had sown the seeds of a recognizably English life. Her brother and his wife, Mary, lived nearby, as did her sister Patience, who had married a military captain named Daniel Denison. Neighbors had become friends, and Anne had established bonds with the women in the little village since giving birth to a baby in their company. She could borrow soap or rosemary and ask anyone to watch two-year-old Samuel if she needed to go into the fields. And though, reportedly, there was a fine minister in Ipswich named Nathaniel Ward, it was always difficult to become accustomed to a new church and a new preacher.

  This fresh departure could only remind Anne of the bitterness of their flight from England. To her, Dudley had never ceased to embody a kind of idealized self-denial and detachment from earthly comforts. Each time he pulled her away from what she cared about, she knew he was acting in her own best interest. But she sorrowed over the fact that she could not emulate him and felt unworthy of the blessings God had showered upon her.

  The trek that lay in front of Anne and her family was forbidding enough to keep most settlers close to Boston and New Towne. But even the fact that Anne was in her second trimester of pregnancy and had a two-year-old in tow did not seem to give her or her family pause. Indeed, Anne’s pregnancy was probably one of the reasons Dudley and his family were intent on leaving quickly. It was easier for a woman to travel while pregnant than after childbirth, and Dudley, impatient as always, had little interest in waiting the months it might take his daughter to recover from labor.

  Even Anne’s husband did not seem to raise any objections to his father-in-law’s haste. An intelligent businessman, Simon could see that the resources of New Towne were becoming stretched. The earth was thin and gravelly and could not sustain the livestock of all the families who had settled there in the last three years. Farmland was limited, constrained by the town’s tight boundaries. To Simon, Ipswich may have represented the utopian purity that his father-in-law craved, but it also offered him the chance to fulfill some of his chief responsibilities as a Puritan father by expanding his holdings. A few of his friends from college had also chosen to settle in Ipswich, and so the move would bring him into a far more congenial community than the one he was leaving behind in New Towne.

  Although no one spoke about it, everyone knew that it was less overwhelming for the men to say good-bye to their old home than for the women. Dudley and Simon would still be able to make frequent trips back to Boston and New Towne for
matters of business and government. In general, men were far more mobile than women, who were limited by the constraints of “breeding”—either they were far advanced in a pregnancy, had a new baby to nurse, or were recovering from the effects of labor or, in some cases, miscarriage. Anne and her sisters would be far more bound to Ipswich than their husbands and father—an alarming prospect given the town’s remoteness.

  But without complaint, the women joined the men on the path to the frontier, a track not yet wide enough for large wagons. As a result, they had had to leave behind much of their furniture—chests, tables, and their few chairs—and Anne could only hope that these reminders of her old home would soon be shipped down one of the local rivers to the new settlement. Everything else they had to carry, pack on the animals, or drag along in carts—pots, kettles, shovels, grain, dried meat and vegetables, bolsters, clothing, and books. As they walked, the young men were largely concerned with keeping the rangy cows, chickens, and pigs in order, for it would have been unthinkable to set up a new home in the wilderness without livestock.

  Their servants traveled with them and did much of the heavy labor of the move, but there was not enough indentured help to go around. Consequently, New England servants could often be recalcitrant and were notoriously “insolent” if they felt overly taxed by their employers; no one could be sure how much one could ask of them.4

  The Indian track rolled up and down large sloping hills the farther north they went. Fortunately, the forest that separated New Towne from Agawam was more like a park than the tangled English woods Anne and her family were used to. The undergrowth was negligible, thanks to centuries of controlled burning by the Indians. As one settler wrote, the natives’ fire “consumes all the underwood and rubbish which otherwise would overgrow the country, making it unpassable, and spoil their much affected hunting. . . . In those places where the Indians inhabit, there is scarce a bush or bramble or any cumbersome underwood to be seen.”5 These repeated ground fires set by the Indians had discouraged the growth of some trees, allowing others to flourish. Hemlocks, beeches, and junipers tended to be almost absent in southern New England, whereas chestnuts, oaks, and hickories grew to enormous heights.