p. 26.) The Hutchinson family, which eventually consisted of 15 children, took the long drive from Alford to Boston (England) often on Sundays to hear Reverend Cotton preach. After 20 years of village life in Alford, the Hutchinsons decided to follow their minister to New England in 1634. One main reason for this move was because Anne wanted to feel free to express her increasingly Puritan views under the leadership of John Cotton. (M.J. Lewis, Portraits of American Women, p. 35.) Unfortunately, Massachusetts turned out to be more religiously constrictive than England for Anne, even as a member of the Puritan church.At the time of Anne's youth in England, the official religion was Protestantism under the Church of England. Puritanism developed in the late Sixteenth Century from the split in Protestantism between those who were satisfied with traditional methods and those who thought the way of worship needed purification. This second group, the Puritans, thought that worship needed to be simpler with fewer sacraments and rites. The battle lines were drawn, and the Puritan Revolution in England began. In the twelve years before 1642, 21,000 Puritans moved to New England (B. Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America, pps. 25-26.) for the purpose of establishing a haven for them to practice Puritanism together. Anne Hutchinson lived in this violent and changing time when the established religion was often questioned, and groups of people came to their own conclusions on points of doctrine. For the first time, people like Anne learned to think for themselves instead of blindly believing what was taught to them by the clergy.Anne was drawn by the excitement of this religious struggle and based her opinions on the study of the Bible. (D. Crawford, p. 18.) Her religious beliefs were mainly derived from John Cotton's preaching which she embellished to produce her own doctrine. Essentially, Anne concluded that faith alone was adequate for s...
