d her with divers
matters, as her keeping two public lectures every week in her house,
whereto sixty or eighty persons did usually resort, and for reproaching
most of the ministers (viz., all except Mr. Cotton) for not preaching a
covenant of free grace, and that they had not the seal of the Spirit,
nor were able ministers of the New Testament: which were clearly proven
against her, though she sought to shift it off. And after many speeches
to and fro, at last she was so full as she could not contain, but vented
her revelations, amongst which this was one, that she had it revealed to
her that she should come into New England and should here be persecuted,
and that God would ruin us and our posterity, and the whole State, for
the same. So the Court proceeded and banished her; but, because it was
winter, they committed her to a private house, where she was well
provided, and her own friends and the elders permitted to go to her, but
none else."

To the modern mind there is in that account merely the picture of an
excitable, overwrought, hysterical woman, keyed to the pitch of
rejoicing in martyrdom and "venting her revelations" to this end and
under an impulse of enthusiasm. It seems impossible that she should be
taken seriously; yet perhaps the Court was in the right, for such a
woman, at once intelligent and fanatical, may have been a greater threat
to the community than it is possible for us to realize at this day.

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