Rec._ i. 207.] Coddington, Coggeshall, and nine more were given leave
to depart within three months, or abide the action of the court; others
were disfranchised; and fifty-eight of the less prominent of the party
were disarmed in Boston alone. [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 223.]

Thus were the early liberals crushed in Massachusetts; the bold were
exiled, the timid were terrified; as a political organization they moved
no more till the theocracy was tottering to its fall; and for forty years
the power of the clergy was absolute in the land.

The fate of Anne Hutchinson makes a fit ending to this sad tale of
oppression and of wrong. In November, 1637, when her friends were crushed,
and the triumphant priests felt that their victim's doom was sure, she was
brought to trial before that ghastliest den of human iniquity, an
ecclesiastical criminal court. The ministers were her accusers, who came
burning with hate to testify to the words she had spoken to them at their
own request, in the belief that the confidence she reposed was to be held
sacred. She had no jury to whose manhood she could appeal, and John
Winthrop, to his lasting shame, was to prosecute her from the judgment
seat. She was soon to become a mother, and her health was feeble, but she
was made to stand till she was exhausted; and yet, abandoned and forlorn,
before those merciless judges, through two long, weary days of hunger and
of cold, the intrepid woman defended her cause with a skill and courage
which even now, after two hundred and fifty years, kindles the heart with
admiration. The case for the government was opened by John Winthrop, the
presiding justice, the attorney-general, the foreman of the jury, and the
chief magistrate of Massachusetts Bay. He upbraided the prisoner with her
many evil courses, with having spoken things prejudicial to the honor of
the ministers, with holding an assembly in her house, and with divulging
the opinions held by those who had been censured by that court; closing in