Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/133

Rh which even to-day no New Englander can recall without shame; a trial in which civil, judicial, and ecclesiastical forces all united to crush a woman, whose deepest fault was a too enthusiastic belief in her own inspiration.

Winthrop conducted the prosecution, mild and calm in manner, but resolutely bent upon punishment, and by him sat Dudley, Endicott, Bradstreet, Nowell and Stoughton; Bradstreet and Winthrop being the only ones who treated her with the faintest semblance of courtesy. Welde and Symmes, Wilson and Hugh Peters, faced her with a curious vindictiveness, and in the throng of excited listeners, hardly a friendly face met her eyes, even her old friend, John Cotton, having become simply a timid instrument of her persecutors.

The building in which the trial took place was thronged. Hundreds who had been attracted by her power, looked on: magistrates and ministers, yeoman and military, the sad colored garments of the gentry in their broad ruffs and high crowned hats, bringing out the buff coats of the soldiers, and the bright bodices of the women, who clung to the vanities of color, and defied the tacit law that limited them to browns and drabs. Over all hung the gray November sky, and the chill of the dolorous month was in the air, and did its work toward intensifying the bitterness which ruled them all.

It is doubtful if Anne Bradstreet made one of the spectators. Her instinct would have been to remain away, for the sympathy she could not help but feel, could not betray itself, without at once ranking her in opposition to the judgment of both husband and