Excommunication followed the sentence of the court, and her bearing under this ban confirms the opinion above expressed concerning her happiness in finding martyrdom; for we are told by Winthrop that "after she was excommunicated, her spirits, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived again, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying that it was the greatest happiness, next to Christ, that ever befel her." She was to have plenty of that kind of "happiness" in her life, for Mr. Cotton, once her firm ally, pronounced against her the censure of the church, and even one of her sons deserted her in her adversity and took sides with her enemies; her husband appears to have been from the first either a very feeble ally or a silent disapprover of her methods. She was persecuted in many ways, even after her removal to Providence, Rhode Island, and certain maternal troubles, the result of physical causes, were gleefully taken advantage of by her enemies and chronicled as divine punishments for heresy. The latter part of her life must be written down a failure, though it held a brave struggle to maintain a gallant front to her foes; and when, in August, 1643, she fell one of the victims of an Indian massacre even her best friends must have felt that there was little cause to regret her fate. She had been in the colonies about two years before she began to preach, about four before she was excommunicated, and about nine before her death. In that time she had proved a firebrand and a disturber of the peace such as had not before been known and she had threatened to disrupt the colony of Boston and rend it into lasting separation. She had failed; but she had made manifest a danger. She had done more than this. She had proved the possibility of woman as an element in the polity and progress of the State. In her way she was a pioneer. She was the first American woman to take a decided lead in matters of general interest. She was the first to hold meetings, to claim for her sex the privilege of freedom as claimed by the men of the Pilgrims. She was the first American woman to uprear the banner of her sex in the matter of independence; she may be said to have been the prototype of all the succeeding upholders of "women's rights." When Winthrop, at her trial, brought up the accusation of having held women's meetings, she quoted "a clear rule in Titus, that the elder women should instruct the younger." Then Winthrop asked her if she would instruct an hundred men if they desired it, to which she replied that she would not, but would instruct any one man who might so wish. She insisted positively upon her right to teach in her own way, and asked: "Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women, and why do you call me to teach the Court?" She may have been somewhat hazy as to her real theological creed, but she assuredly held clear ideas as to the rights of her sex.