William Hutchinson (Rhode Island judge)

The Hutchinsons and 18 others departed to form the new settlement of Pocasset on the Narragansett Bay, which was renamed Portsmouth and became one of the original towns in the Rhode Island colony.

Cotton had strong Puritan sympathies, however, and Archbishop William Laud began cracking down on those whose opinions differed from the established Anglican church.

[1] Mrs. Hutchinson was distraught to lose her mentor, and the family intended to sail with him to New England aboard the ship Griffin in 1633; however, Anne's 14th pregnancy prevented it.

[6] He was one of the town's Deputies to the Massachusetts Bay General Court from 1635 to 1636, and was also a selectman from 1635 to 1637, attending a selectmen's meeting for the last time in January 1638 as his tenure in Boston was coming to an end.

[7] Hutchinson's wife was described by historian Thomas W. Bicknell, writing 300 years after she lived, as "a pure and excellent woman, to whose person and conduct there attaches no stain.

She was helpful to the sick and needy, and she was undeniably gifted in argument and speech, but her theological doctrines and open disdain toward Boston's ministers began to inflame a growing controversy between Cotton's followers and the Puritan elders.

[6] In late 1636, Governor John Winthrop wrote that Mrs. Hutchinson was "a woman of ready wit and bold spirit," but she had brought several dangerous theological errors which he elaborated on in his journal.

[8] William Hutchinson and other supporters of his wife signed the Portsmouth Compact on March 7, 1638 before leaving Boston, agreeing to form a non-sectarian government that was Christian in character.

[7] The following year, a disagreement prompted Coddington and a few other leaders to leave Portsmouth and begin a new settlement at the south end of the island called Newport.

[10] In his journal, Governor Winthrop described the 1639 disagreement in Portsmouth: "the people grew very tumultuous and put out Mr. Coddington and the other three magistrates, and chose Mr. William Hutchinson only, a man of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife, who had been the beginner of all the former troubles in the country and still continued to breed disturbance.

"[8] Hutchinson died in Portsmouth shortly after June 1641, after which his widow left Rhode Island to live in New Netherland on the border between the Bronx and Westchester County, New York.