At an early age she married William Hutchinson, “a very honest and peaceable man of good estate.” And in 1634 with her husband and children she journeyed to America--the outcome of the Reverend John Cotton’s leaving England because of his persecution by the bishops. Anne Hutchinson had been one of his most ardent disciples in the church at old Boston, and was now to sit under him in the new Boston. It was a pleasant voyage of seven weeks, in the good ship _Griffen_. There were over a hundred passengers, among them two ministers, so you may be sure there were sermons and prayers and religious discussions all during the crossing. Indeed Mistress Anne Hutchinson was so outspoken in her doctrines that, when they landed, one of these ministers reported her to the governor as holding dangerous beliefs. Though her husband was accepted at once, the colony leaders took a week’s time to look into her liberal views, and then examined her rigorously before admitting her to membership in the church. For Massachusetts, you remember, was settled by Puritans who had met persecution in England, and had braved the dangers of the long voyage and the greater dangers of hunger and illness in a new land, in order to worship God in their own way. In accomplishing this they became as intolerant as those from whom they had fled. Indeed there was a far closer relation of church and state in Massachusetts than in England. The only liberty the fathers allowed was the liberty to believe just as they believed. They were right, others were wrong, and on this theory they regulated everything, both religious and civil. Until their own house could be built, Mistress Anne Hutchinson and some of the children lived at the Reverend Cotton’s; and for the three years the family remained in Boston, their home was across the street from John Winthrop’s. Almost immediately this house became the social center of the town and Anne Hutchinson had a leading place among the three hundred inhabitants and the fast friendship of the brilliant young Englishman, Sir Harry Vane, then serving a term as governor of the colony. The women loved her for her goodness of heart, her cheerful neighborliness, her great skill in nursing. Both men and women welcomed her intellectual and magnetic personality. She had a vigorous mind, a dauntless courage, a natural gift for leadership; she was capable, energetic, amiable.