During a two days' trial, conducted inquisitorially, like an English Court of High Commission, Cambridge presented the spectacle of a high-spirited and gifted woman, at the worst but a victim of enthusiasm, badgered by the court and by the ministers, whose dominant order she had attacked. Cotton, with more than his usual courage, stood her defender. The tough-fibered Hugh Peter, who made himself conspicuous in several ways, took it on him to rebuke Cotton for saying a word in defense of the accused. Endecott and Hugh Peter, mates well matched, browbeat the witnesses who appeared in Mrs. Hutchinson's behalf, and Dudley, the conscientious advocate of persecution, was rude and overbearing. Winthrop acted as chief inquisitor, the narrow sincerity and superstition of his nature obscuring the nobler qualities of the man. [Sidenote: Mrs. Hutchinson is excommunicated.] [Sidenote: Note 8.] [Sidenote: Rise, Reign, Ruine, etc., and Winthrop's Journal, i, 309, 310.] Mrs. Hutchinson defended herself adroitly at first, refusing to be trapped into self-condemnation. But her natural part was that of an outspoken agitator, and her religious exaltation had been increased, doubtless, by persecution, for combativeness is a stimulant even to zeal. On the second day she threw away "the fear of man," and declared that she had an inward assurance of her deliverance, adding that the General Court would suffer disaster. For this prophesying she was promptly condemned. Cotton had prophesied notably on one occasion, Wilson, his colleague, was given to rhyming prophecies, and Hooker had made a solemn prediction while in Holland. In this very year the plan of the Pequot campaign had been radically changed in compliance with a revelation vouchsafed to the chaplain, Stone. But these were ministers, and never was the ministerial office so reverenced as by the Puritans, who professed to strip it of every outward attribute of priestliness. Above all, for a woman to teach and to have revelations was to stand the world on its head. "We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex," etc., said Winthrop severely to Mrs. Hutchinson during the trial. She was sentenced to banishment, but reprieved, that the church might deal with her. On the persuasion of Cotton and others, Mrs. Hutchinson wrote a recantation apologizing for her assumption to have revelations, and retracting certain opinions of which she had been accused. But she added that she had never intended to teach or to hold these opinions. For this falsehood, as it was deemed, she was summarily excommunicated. Yet nothing seems more probable than that her hyperbolic utterances under excitement had not stood for dogmatic opinions. Under Cotton's fine-spun system of church government a member could not be excommunicated except by unanimous consent. Many of Mrs. Hutchinson's friends were absent from the colony, others had prudently changed sides or stayed away from the meeting.