Anne Hutchinson was perhaps the most famous Englishwoman in colonial American history, viewed in later centuries as a crusader for religious liberty and a prototypical feminist. Michael Winship, author of the highly acclaimed Making Heretics, provides a startlingly new and fresh account of her oft-told tale, disentangling what really happened from the legends that have misrepresented her for so long.

During the 1630s, religious controversies drove a wedge into the puritan communities of Massachusetts. Anne Hutchinson and other members began to speak out against mainstream doctrine, while ministers like John Cotton argued for personal discovery of salvation. The puritan fathers viewed these activities as a direct and dangerous threat to the status quo and engaged in a fierce and finally successful fight against them. Refusing to disavow her beliefs, Hutchinson was put on trial twice—first for slandering the colony’s ministers, then for heresy—and banished from the colony.

Combing archives for neglected manuscripts and ancient books for obscure references, Winship gives new voice to other characters in the drama whose significance has not previously been understood. Here are Thomas Shepard, a militant heresy hunter who vigorously pursued both Cotton and Hutchinson; Thomas Dudley, the most important leader in Massachusetts after Governor John Winthrop; Henry Vane, a well-connected supporter of radical theology; and John Wheelwright, a bellicose minister who was a lightning rod for the frustrations of other dissidents. Winship also analyzes the political struggle that almost destroyed the colony and places Hutchinson’s trials within the context of this turmoil.

As Winship shows, although the trials of Anne Hutchinson and her allies were used ostensibly to protect Massachusetts’ Christian society, they instead nearly tore it apart. His concise, fast-moving, and up-to-date account brings puritan doctrine back into focus, giving us a much closer and more informed look at a society marked by religious intolerance and immoderation, one that still echoes in our own times. As long as governments take it upon themselves to define orthodoxies of conscience, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson will be required reading for students and concerned citizens alike.

Making Heretics is a major new narrative of the famous Massachusetts disputes of the late 1630s misleadingly labeled the "antinomian controversy" by later historians. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, Michael Winship fundamentally recasts these interlocked religious and political struggles as a complex ongoing interaction of personalities and personal agendas and as a succession of short-term events with cumulative results. Previously neglected figures like Sir Henry Vane and John Wheelwright assume leading roles in the processes that nearly ended Massachusetts, while more familiar "hot Protestants" like John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson are relocated in larger frameworks. The book features a striking portrayal of the minister Thomas Shepard as an angry heresy-hunting militant, helping to set the volatile terms on which the disputes were conducted and keeping the flames of contention stoked even as he ostensibly attempted to quell them. The first book-length treatment in forty years, Making Heretics locates its story in rich contexts, ranging from ministerial quarrels and negotiations over fine but bitterly contested theological points to the shadowy worlds of orthodox and unorthodox lay piety, and from the transatlantic struggles over the Massachusetts Bay Company''s charter to the fraught apocalyptic geopolitics of the Reformation itself. An object study in the ways that puritanism generated, managed, and failed to manage diversity, Making Heretics carries its account on into England in the 1640s and 1650s and helps explain the differing fortunes of puritanism in the Old and New Worlds.

Anne Hutchinson was perhaps the most famous Englishwoman in colonial American history, viewed in later centuries as a crusader for religious liberty and a prototypical feminist. Michael Winship, author of the highly acclaimed Making Heretics, provides a startlingly new and fresh account of her oft-told tale, disentangling what really happened from the legends that have misrepresented her for so long.

During the 1630s, religious controversies drove a wedge into the puritan communities of Massachusetts. Anne Hutchinson and other members began to speak out against mainstream doctrine, while ministers like John Cotton argued for personal discovery of salvation. The puritan fathers viewed these activities as a direct and dangerous threat to the status quo and engaged in a fierce and finally successful fight against them. Refusing to disavow her beliefs, Hutchinson was put on trial twice—first for slandering the colony’s ministers, then for heresy—and banished from the colony.

Combing archives for neglected manuscripts and ancient books for obscure references, Winship gives new voice to other characters in the drama whose significance has not previously been understood. Here are Thomas Shepard, a militant heresy hunter who vigorously pursued both Cotton and Hutchinson; Thomas Dudley, the most important leader in Massachusetts after Governor John Winthrop; Henry Vane, a well-connected supporter of radical theology; and John Wheelwright, a bellicose minister who was a lightning rod for the frustrations of other dissidents. Winship also analyzes the political struggle that almost destroyed the colony and places Hutchinson’s trials within the context of this turmoil.

As Winship shows, although the trials of Anne Hutchinson and her allies were used ostensibly to protect Massachusetts’ Christian society, they instead nearly tore it apart. His concise, fast-moving, and up-to-date account brings puritan doctrine back into focus, giving us a much closer and more informed look at a society marked by religious intolerance and immoderation, one that still echoes in our own times. As long as governments take it upon themselves to define orthodoxies of conscience, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson will be required reading for students and concerned citizens alike.

Making Heretics is a major new narrative of the famous Massachusetts disputes of the late 1630s misleadingly labeled the "antinomian controversy" by later historians. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, Michael Winship fundamentally recasts these interlocked religious and political struggles as a complex ongoing interaction of personalities and personal agendas and as a succession of short-term events with cumulative results. Previously neglected figures like Sir Henry Vane and John Wheelwright assume leading roles in the processes that nearly ended Massachusetts, while more familiar "hot Protestants" like John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson are relocated in larger frameworks. The book features a striking portrayal of the minister Thomas Shepard as an angry heresy-hunting militant, helping to set the volatile terms on which the disputes were conducted and keeping the flames of contention stoked even as he ostensibly attempted to quell them. The first book-length treatment in forty years, Making Heretics locates its story in rich contexts, ranging from ministerial quarrels and negotiations over fine but bitterly contested theological points to the shadowy worlds of orthodox and unorthodox lay piety, and from the transatlantic struggles over the Massachusetts Bay Company''s charter to the fraught apocalyptic geopolitics of the Reformation itself. An object study in the ways that puritanism generated, managed, and failed to manage diversity, Making Heretics carries its account on into England in the 1640s and 1650s and helps explain the differing fortunes of puritanism in the Old and New Worlds.