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38 influenced the course of events in American history. It is indeed curious that at that time, when women held such an inferior position in the intellectual world, heads of councils of state and hoary-headed ministers should have allowed themselves to be involved in controversy in which their chief adversary was a woman.

Anne Hutchinson was born at Alford, in Lincolnshire, not far from Boston, England, on the 28th of July, 1591, so that she must have been forty-three years old when she came to Boston, though her comely figure and attractive face and engaging manners gave her a much more youthful appearance. Her father was a college man and her mother was a great-aunt of the poet Dryden, and was also related to the family from which descended the famous writer, Jonathan Swift, so Anne from both parents inherited intellect and force. Her marriage with William Hutchinson was the result of pure and disinterested love, for he had no right to heraldic devices. Of this husband little need be said. He is described by contemporaries as a man of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholely guided by his wife. Perhaps this was fortunate, considering his wife's strong and dominant will.

Things might have gone well for Mistress Hutchinson in the Colony had she not fallen into some heated disputes on certain religious subjects with one of her fellow-voyagers on board the "Griffin." This resulted in her adversary's, the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, gaining a deep and bitter animosity toward her. No sooner had they landed than he took occasion to denounce her as a prophetess—a dangerous accusation in those days. Regardless of her "Reverend" foe she immediately began to teach her new strange doctrines to those about her. And almost all of Puritan Boston fell under the spell of her eloquence and her magnetic charm. The women crowded her home to hear her read from the Scriptures and explain texts,