And what became of this first woman leader in America?  Whether the fate of this woman was typical of what was in store for all female speakers and women outside their place is not stated by the elders; but they were firm in their belief that her death was an appropriate punishment.  She removed to Rhode Island and later to New York, where she and all her family, with the exception of one person, were killed by the Indians.  As Thomas Welde says in the preface of A Short Story of the Rise, Wane and Ruin of the Antinomians (1644):  “I never heard that the Indians in these parts did ever before commit the like outrage upon any one family, or families; and therefore God’s hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woful woman, to make her and those belonging to her an unheard of heavy example of their cruelty above others.”

VIII.  Woman and Witchcraft

It was at staid Boston that Anne Hutchinson marshalled her forces; it was at peace-loving Salem that the Devil marshalled his witches in a last despairing onslaught against the saints.  To many readers there may seem to be little or no connection between witchcraft and religion; but an examination of the facts leading to the execution of the various martyrs to superstition at Salem will convince the skeptical that there was a most intimate relationship between the Puritan creed and the theory of witchcraft.

Looking back after the passing of more than two hundred years, we cannot but deem it strange that such an enlightened, educated and thoroughly intelligent folk as the Puritans could have believed in the possession of this malignant power.  Especially does it appear incredible when we remember that here was a people that came to this country for the exercise of religious freedom, a citizenship that was descended from men trained in the universities of England, a stalwart band that under extreme privation had founded a college within sixteen years after the settlement of a wilderness.  It must be borne in mind, however, that the Massachusetts colonies were not alone in this belief in witchcraft.  It was common throughout the world, and was as aged as humanity.  Deprived of the aid of modern science in explaining peculiar processes and happenings, man had long been accustomed to fall back upon devils, witches, and evil spirits as premises for his arguments.  While the execution of the witch was not so common an event elsewhere in the world, during the Salem period, yet it was not unknown among so-called enlightened people.  As late as 1712 a woman was burned near London for witchcraft, and several city clergymen were among the prosecutors.