Prior knowledge: No prior reading of the book. The scene introductions explain civil courts, banishment, printing type, and libel.
Before you begin
Follow two Massachusetts Bay dissenters in the 1630s, a Philadelphia printer in 1692, and a New York jury in 1735. Religious teaching, printing equipment, and courtroom procedure are different channels through which ideas could be limited or defended. The sequence compares those channels without treating every case as the same conflict.
May a government punish a belief because it considers that belief dangerous?
Modern AI-assisted reconstruction. The woods south of Salem, January 1636. Banished by Massachusetts for denying that magistrates may punish belief, Roger Williams trudges alone through deep snow. He is three days ahead of the men sent to seize him, and they will find his house empty. Rothbard says the great flight south from the Bay began with him and ended in Providence, a haven of religious liberty. Chapter 21 of Conceived in Liberty.
Before this scene
In Massachusetts Bay, religious disagreement could become a matter for civil authorities. Roger Williams challenged their right to punish religious beliefs and questioned the king’s right to grant land belonging to Native people. The General Court, the colony’s governing assembly and court, ordered him banished in October 1635. He could remain through winter only if he stopped spreading his opinions. When he continued preaching, officials ordered him sent to England. His flight belongs to January 1636; its exact day is unrecorded.
[1][2]
The episode
Companion narration combining the book and other sources; this is not Rothbard’s original text.
In October 1635 the Massachusetts General Court banished Roger Williams for denying that magistrates may punish breaches of the first table of the law, and for attacking the king’s right to grant land the Indians owned. Because winter was coming he was allowed to stay until spring if he kept quiet. He did not. In January the governor and assistants learned that he was preaching in his own house at Salem to more than twenty followers who meant to plant a settlement on Narragansett Bay, and they ordered him seized and shipped to England. Captain Underhill took a pinnace to Salem and found that Williams had gone three days before, “but whither they could not learn.” Rothbard has him fleeing alone into the wilderness and trudging south through the snow (CiL, p. 175), in a winter so hard, John Barry writes, that Narragansett Bay froze. Williams recalled long afterward that for fourteen weeks he did not know what bread or bed meant. He wintered among the Narragansett, was joined in the spring by four friends, and after being pushed out of Seekonk he founded Providence, where the land was bought from the natives and no one was punished for belief. Rothbard calls his life there “free and safe” (p. 176). The southward flight from Massachusetts had begun, and it began with one man walking.
Why it matters
Interpretation: Williams’s flight turns a dispute over belief into a dispute over the limits of government. Leaving a jurisdiction may offer refuge while imposing serious costs on the dissenter.
[1][2]
Examine and discuss
Identify a belief Williams held that challenged civil authority.
Why was his continued preaching consequential even after the banishment order?
Compare the authority of this court with the Virginia assembly: what can each institution demand of individuals?
Historical notes
The ship lay at Nantasket; a pinnace was sent to Salem to bring him to it and found him gone three days earlier. Source and context
What happens to a fair hearing when the governing body also judges its own critics?
Modern AI-assisted reconstruction. Newtown, Massachusetts, November 1637. Anne Hutchinson stands alone before Governor Winthrop and the General Court, which has just voted to banish her, and asks one thing: wherefore? Winthrop answers, “Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied.” Rothbard’s point is that the court felt no need to justify itself before reason, natural justice or the public, and refused her any answer. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.
Before this scene
Anne Hutchinson attracted followers in Massachusetts Bay through her religious teaching. Rothbard connects the campaign against her to the defeat of her allies in the colony’s election of 1637. The General Court combined legislative and judicial authority: the same institution made rules and heard cases. In November it examined Hutchinson and ordered her banished. This was a civil proceeding, distinct from the church proceeding that followed. The surviving examination record should be read alongside Rothbard’s account, because their descriptions of the grounds differ.
[1][2]
Rothbard’s account
Rothbard says Anne Hutchinson’s heresy shook Massachusetts largely because she “occupied a high place in the colony’s oligarchy” and won converts with “rapid and sweeping success” (p. 180). (p. 180) After the Winthrop forces won the May 1637 election by moving it to Newtown, Vane’s defeat “spelled swift suppression for the antinomian heretics” (p. 181). (p. 181) Having “vented their fury on the major followers and isolated the leader,” the oligarchs reached “the culminating point of the drama: the trial and persecution of Anne Hutchinson herself” (p. 181). (p. 181)
“There was no independent judiciary in the colonies”: the legislature, the General Court, was also the highest court (p. 181). (p. 181) In November 1637 her enemies on that court duly “tried” her, convicted her of sedition and contempt, and banished her (p. 182). (p. 182) Only two members dissented, and when Winthrop pronounced sentence she “courageously” asked: “I desire to know wherefore I am banished” (p. 182). (p. 182) Winthrop “refused to answer”: “Say no more. The court knows wherefore, and is satisfied” (p. 182). (p. 182) Rothbard’s verdict: “It was apparently enough for the court to be satisfied; no justification before the bar of reason, natural justice, or the public was deemed necessary” (p. 182). (p. 182)
“Spared banishment during the rugged winter, she was imprisoned at the home of one of her major enemies” (pp. 182-183). (p. 182-183) At her church trial in March even John Cotton “turned on her savagely,” but she had the last word: “Better to be cast out of the Church than to deny Christ” (pp. 182-183). (p. 182-183) In April, “ill and exhausted,” she joined her husband at Aquidneck (pp. 182-183). (p. 182-183)
Additional context beyond the book
Winthrop’s journal has the General Court assembling on 2 November 1637.[3] Her examination opened on 7 November in a thatched-roof meetinghouse, where the nine magistrates and thirty-one deputies of the court sat on backless wooden benches.[4] At one point she seemed ready to collapse, and a chair was called for.[4] When she said she saw the truth “by an immediate revelation” from God, Deputy Governor Dudley announced, “I am now fully persuaded that Mrs. Hutchinson is deluded by the Devil.”[4] John Cotton was not among the two judges who voted against banishing her, and one minister abstained.[4]
The examination record never names sedition or contempt: Winthrop gave the court’s grounds as “the troublesomeness of her spirit and the danger of her course amongst us,” and the sentence called her “a woman not fit for our society.”[2] The court’s record has Winthrop answering her question, “I desire to know wherefore I am banished?”, with “Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied.”[2]
Winthrop wrote that “because it was winter, they committed her to a private house,” which Famous Trials places in Roxbury.[3][4] On 1 April 1638 she began a six-day walk south to Providence Plantation, where she boarded a ship for Aquidneck.[4]
Why it matters
Interpretation: The case invites scrutiny of how political rivalry, religious disagreement, and judicial power interact. A conclusion about fairness should use the recorded proceedings, not the painted expressions of the participants.
[1][2]
Examine and discuss
What different powers did the General Court combine?
What does the examination record establish about the grounds for banishment, and how does that differ from Rothbard’s description?
Compare Hutchinson’s hearing with Williams’s flight: which choices were available to each dissenter?
Historical notes
The examination record names no offense called sedition or contempt (those were the grounds on which the court had convicted Wheelwright in March 1637). Winthrop gave the court’s grounds as “the troublesomeness of her spirit and the danger of her course amongst us,” and the sentence banished her “as being a woman not fit for our society.” The Famous Trials account says the court was less than clear about the crime. Source and context
Scene and complete sources: https://freecapitalists.org/books/conceived-in-liberty/episodes/hutchinson-trial-1637/
Painting and companion additions: CC BY 4.0, credit freecapitalists.org. Source text: CC BY 3.0. External sources retain their own terms.
Connecting the scenes: Move to Pennsylvania more than fifty years later. Here the authorities act against the tools that distribute a religious argument.
Scene 3 of 4 · summer 1692, before the proclamation against Keith at the end of August · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Volume I, chapter 64
The press seizure has no recorded day or month in the sources used here; the narrative places it in summer 1692 before the end-of-August proclamation.
How can control of printing tools restrict public disagreement?
Modern AI-assisted reconstruction. Philadelphia, summer 1692. Quaker officers carry William Bradford’s press and cases of type out of his shop. The printer, under arrest, stands on his own doorstep and watches them go. His crime: he printed the Keithians’ paper without a license. Rothbard says the Quaker officials, once the persecuted, had become the persecutors. Chapter 64 of Conceived in Liberty.
Before this scene
Pennsylvania’s Quakers divided in 1692 over George Keith’s religious position. William Bradford, a printer who supported Keith, printed the group’s statement. Authorities arrested Bradford and John McComb, who distributed the pamphlet, and confiscated the press and type. Type means the individual pieces used to compose printed words. The dispute therefore concerned both religious authority and the practical means of circulating arguments. Rothbard places the seizure before a proclamation at the end of August; the sources used here do not establish its exact day.
[1][2]
The episode
Companion narration combining the book and other sources; this is not Rothbard’s original text.
In 1692 the Quakers of Pennsylvania split. George Keith and his followers, the Keithians, drew up a statement of their position, and William Bradford, the only printer in Philadelphia and a Keithian himself, printed it. The Quaker magistrates answered the way governments do. Rothbard tells it: they arrested Bradford and John McComb, who distributed the pamphlet, for printing unlicensed books without the printer’s name on them, confiscated Bradford’s press and type, and took away McComb’s license as a retailer (CiL, p. 488). The press and the cases of type, the only means of printing in the whole province, were carried off and lodged in Samuel Jennings’ house. Bradford was tried that year, argued his own case, and the jury could not agree. He said afterward that he was held until Governor Fletcher freed him in April 1693 and ordered the sheriff to give his tools back. Rothbard’s point is that a people who had fled persecution in England were now doing the persecuting, and he calls it the first sign that the Quakers were beginning to abandon the principles of individual liberty for the perquisites of power. Bradford got his press back and took it to New York.
Why it matters
Interpretation: Freedom to express a view depends partly on access to the tools that carry it. Seizing a press can restrict other people’s ability to encounter an argument as well as the printer’s ability to publish it.
[1][2]
Examine and discuss
Which people and materials were targeted by the authorities?
How would confiscating type affect the circulation of a religious argument?
Compare this seizure with Williams’s banishment: what does each action remove from public discussion?
Read further and reconstruction
Volume I, chapter 64: Government Returns to Pennsylvania. The event and its interpretation are supported by the sources below. Pose, expression, lighting, and composition are artistic choices, not a visual record of the event.
Scene and complete sources: https://freecapitalists.org/books/conceived-in-liberty/episodes/bradford-press-1692/
Painting and companion additions: CC BY 4.0, credit freecapitalists.org. Source text: CC BY 3.0. External sources retain their own terms.
Connecting the scenes: Move to New York in 1735. A jury resists the prosecution of a printer, but an acquittal is not necessarily a lasting change in law.
Scene 4 of 4 · 4 August 1735 · New York City · Volume II, chapter 27
How much can one jury verdict change the limits on criticism of government?
Modern AI-assisted reconstruction. New York, 4 August 1735. The jury comes back in ten minutes, and the crowded hall answers with three huzzas as printer John Peter Zenger stands at the bar beside Andrew Hamilton. Rothbard is cooler than the legend: a quarrel between two factions of the landed oligarchy, though it did win truth as a defense and a jury’s voice on the law. Chapter 27 of Conceived in Liberty.
Before this scene
John Peter Zenger printed criticism of Governor William Cosby and was jailed before his trial. The accusation was libel, meaning a published statement treated as unlawfully damaging to someone’s reputation. His defense lawyer Andrew Hamilton asked the jury to consider both the truth of the articles and the law used against the printer. The dispute also involved competing political factions. Rothbard praises the defense while warning against turning the acquittal into a simple story of permanent press freedom.
[1][2]
The episode
Companion narration combining the book and other sources; this is not Rothbard’s original text.
On 4 August 1735, in the second-floor courtroom of City Hall on Wall Street, the jury withdrew and came back in about ten minutes. Asked whether John Peter Zenger was guilty of printing libels, the foreman answered Not Guilty, and, in the words of the printed narrative of the case, there were three huzzas in the hall, which was crowded with people. Zenger had sat in jail for nine months on Governor Cosby’s order, and the court had disbarred his lawyers for objecting to Cosby’s packing of the bench, so the Morris faction brought in Andrew Hamilton, the venerable lawyer from Philadelphia. He won by asking the jury to judge the law as well as the facts and by arguing that the articles were true. Zenger was freed the next day, and Hamilton was given a dinner and a salute of cannon when he left. Rothbard praises the two legal points, then cuts the legend down. The fight was between two factions of the landed oligarchy, truth as a defense is “a very shaky reed,” and English law took neither point until 1792 and 1843 (CiL, p. 646). The real enemy of a free press in those years, he says, was the colonial Assembly.
Why it matters
Interpretation: A jury may protect a particular defendant without settling every future conflict over expression. Distinguishing the outcome of a case from a lasting change in law prevents an attractive origin story from replacing analysis.
[1][2]
Examine and discuss
What did Hamilton ask the jury to consider?
Why does the political rivalry matter when interpreting the trial?
Compare Zenger’s acquittal with Bradford’s confiscated press: what protected expression, and what remained vulnerable?
Scene and complete sources: https://freecapitalists.org/books/conceived-in-liberty/episodes/zenger-verdict-1735/
Painting and companion additions: CC BY 4.0, credit freecapitalists.org. Source text: CC BY 3.0. External sources retain their own terms.
Connect the cases
Compare one religious-dissent scene with one printing scene. Explain the mechanism that restricted expression, the response available, and what the outcome did and did not establish.
