As I read the meagre evidences of her belief, I see that Anne Hutchinson had a high supernatural faith which, though mystical at its roots, aimed at being practical in its fruits; but she was critical, tactless, and over-inquisitive, and doubtless censorious, and worst of all she “vented her revelations,” which made her seem to many of the Puritans the very essence of fanaticism; so she was promptly placed on trial for heresy for “twenty-nine cursed opinions and falling into fearful lying, with an impudent Forehead in the public assembly.” The end of it all in that theocracy could not be uncertain. One woman, even though her followers included Governor Sir Henry Vane, and a hundred of the most influential men of the community, could not stop the powerful machinery of the Puritan Church and Commonwealth, the calm, well-planned opposition of Winthrop; and after a succession of mortifying indignities, and unlimited petty hectoring and annoying, she was banished. “The court put an end to her vapouring talk, and finding no hope of reclaiming her from her scandalous, dangerous, and enchanting extravagancies, ordered her out of the colony.” In reading of her life, her trials, it is difficult to judge whether--to borrow Howel’s expression--the crosier or the distaff were most to blame in all this sad business; the preachers certainly took an over-active part. Of the personal appearance of this “erroneous gentlewoman” we know nothing. I do not think, in spite of the presumptive evidence of the marked personal beauty of her descendants, that she was a handsome woman, else it would certainly be so stated. The author of the _Short Story of the Rise Reigne and Ruine of the Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines that infected the Churches of New England_ calls her “a woman of a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment inferior to many women.” He also termed her “the American Jezebel,” and so did the traveller Josselyn in his _Account of Two Voyages to New England_; while Minister Hooker styled her “a wretched woman.” Johnson, in his _Wonder-Working Providence_, calls her the “masterpiece of woman’s wit.” Governor Winthrop said she was “a woman of ready wit and bold spirit.” Cotton Mather called her a virago, cunning, canting, and proud, but he did not know her.